You are here Modern cartography helps us map out our interconnectedness By Julie Nixon Maps have long

been a valuable part of the story of humankind. Interestingly, one of the oldest known maps is not of the earth, but of the heavens. Consisting of dots scraped into a stone wall at the Lascaux caves in France, this ancient map represents a portion of the night sky: the stars Vega, Deneb and Altair, and the open cluster of Pleiades. This ordinary sketch from 16,500 BC was the genesis of a curious phenomenon: nearly all maps ever created have been drawn using this linear spatial direction, looking straight down from the sky. When we think of a map, most of us likely visualize this nonrealistic geographical representation of an area, with places and objects labelled. Maps created with a horizontal or oblique perspective, or even some other dimension, are somewhat unusual. Although traditionally a tool used to diagram spatial information, artists and scientists have begun investigating other ways, often very creative ways, to arrange data. From then to now, the motivations have been similar, but the agencies are vastly different. With liberal access to information via the Internet and an endless selection of digital tools currently available, dynamic mapmaking by virtually everyone has taken the cartography world by storm. Mapmaking has become extremely accessible to all kinds of people. Moving away from the realm of academia and into the space of art, emotion and curiosity, maps are stimulating new ways of making sense of our communities and our society, in a much broader and more sensitive way. Maps are reasonably subjective as well a kind of self-portrait influenced by the experiences and imagination of the mapmaker. And when we utilize artistic forms of mapmaking, we enhance our own metacognition learning about ourselves, our values and our perceptions. Through maps we are given the opportunity to find connections between things, place and complex concepts together in a graphic image full of information and beauty, writes Sheila Harrington in the book Islands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas (TouchWood Editions, 2005). Maps reveal what connects us and what divides us. Conventional maps recorded the details of where people lived; now maps reveal how people live. A little research into modern cartography uncovers many types of maps with diverse approaches: cartograms or anamorphic maps (where area is replaced with an alternate thematic variable and the map space or geometry is reshaped or rescaled to express this information), geopictorial maps (artistic, often cartoonlike 3D or flat map illustrated with buildings and animals, most often used for tourist maps), neogeography (for example, geotagging your photos from a road trip using an online program like flickr), infographics (conceptual information mapped visually, not spatially), memory maps (drawing maps from memory), barefoot mapping, green mapping. As subversive cartographies, these maps present alternative viewpoints that effectively unsettle the established order. Maps are no longer cast as mirrors of reality, instead they are increasingly conceived as diverse ways of thinking, perceiving and representing space and place which express values, world-views and emotions. Maps are no longer part of an elite discourse: they can empower, mystify, and enchant, write Chris Perkins and Jrn Seemann (call for papers for the 2008 Association of American Geographers meeting, Subversive Cartographies for Social Change). More than ever before, subversive mapping has an agency that can exist apart from conventional cartography, and even challenge it. One of the biggest trends in subversive cartography is known as asset mapping, which involves documenting the tangible and intangible resources of a community, viewing it as a place with assets to be preserved and enhanced, not deficits to be remedied (Community Asset Mapping: Trends and Issues Alert no. 47; by Sandra Kerka, 2003). Community-based mapping is experiencing huge growth all over the world. A local pioneer of community mapmaking, geographer Dr. Briony Penn has run mapping workshops for the past 15 years, helping to train the trainers giving them the tools and knowledge to map their own home places, and to discover the social, ecological, historical and economic assets of their communities. Thats the whole point: connecting people to their place, says Penn. There is a natural human

impulse to feel connected to land and other people. People are really using maps to find themselves again, observes Penn. And since maps have often been used for people who are lost, its both a practical and metaphorical way of analyzing why were seeing a resurgence of mapmaking. People literally lose a part of themselves with our societys 9-to-5 pace, ubiquitous advertising and great force of consumerism. There is definitely a motivation of advocacy thinly veiled within the desire to create maps. Penn agrees. Maps have always been controlled by the people who held power . . . So this is kind of like using mapping to claim sovereignty over beauty. Its the democratization of mapmaking, putting it in the hands of people and communities, because they have different values. But really its about celebrating home places, and sharing with others the parts of it that are meaningful to each of us, as well as our talents, knowledge and experience all the while sharing an understanding of how important it is to protect our land. The map locates accurately on land those places we value, while providing some space on the paper to wax and paint poetically what those values are. In this age of increasing land-use conflicts, these is a renaissance of mapping to mark places of exquisite value in the hopes of saving them, writes Penn, referring to how community maps created at the grassroots level are increasing being used in planning and community development at a municipal level. Locally, the Common Ground Community Mapping Project works as facilitator to provide mapping services and learning resources to community groups and schools. Maeve Lydon, founder of the organization and current Director at the Office of Community-Based Research at the University of Victoria, says that visioning is a powerful and inexpensive tool for getting all ages involved in planning. Common Ground and the university have been developing a strong partnership in order to get more communities and people involved in community mapping. We what it to be a tool for planning for the region, thats our goal, says Lydon. Ultimately, developing the links between people, emotions and experiences through participatory mapping enhances the quality of a neighbourhood; builds trust, empathy and relationships; and challenges assumptions and breaks down stereotypes. We can only judge the value of any one part when we come to know it intimately, in all its dimensions, with awareness and openness. And words alone tell only a small part of the story, writes author Sheila Harrington. Many community mappers are essentially 21st-century naturalists, ordinary people who are concerned with a higher understanding of the natural world and how to conserve it. Early naturalists simply observed and studied the world around them, cataloguing their observations with drawings and short text. Before natural history became serious scientific study, naturalists were more interested in observation rather than experiment, and presented [their work] in popular rather than academic form (Apple Dictionary). Community mapping reveals a re-awakening of this exploration and enthusiasm to know local animals, plants and people. Another growing trend, radical cartography bridges the gap between cartography, geography, art and activism. Radical cartography is a powerful tool and a voice for people to catalyze symbolic resistance to established media, government and societal norms. Traditional mapmaking techniques are manipulated in order to advocate or shape an argument and present powerful information. Radical cartographers become authors of spatial narrative that confront power and set the rules of debate for political, economic and social issues (An Atlas of Radical Cartography, The Journal of Aesthetics Protest Press, 2007). After New York City began installing surveillance cameras in Lower Manhattan, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Surveillance Camera Players started cataloguing the cameras locations. iSee, created by the Institute for Applied Autonomy, is an interactive online map that helps users build routes of least surveillance, steering clear of as many cameras as possible. The often absurdly circuitous routes became sources of both humor and reflection on the changing urban landscape (from Tactical Cartographies, An Atlas of Radical Cartography). As well, with the debate on the right to privacy unlocked, public discourse by concerned citizens could take place. Not all subversive cartography artworks aim towards activism. Many artists are turning mapping inside out and upside down, simply for the joy of creation, or for finding new ways of looking at themselves or the world around them. Theres much buzz around the potential in this realm of mapmaking. Research revealed two projects in particular that are landmarks of ingenuity.

Artist Stefanie Posavec recently exhibited her work called On the Map, which examines Kerouacs On the Road in an entirely different way. Posavec carefully combed through the text, counting words and sentences, noting themes and patterns not unlike that of a surveyor, says Justine Aw, senior editor of NotCot.org. She then mapped her prosodic findings into a visual representation of rhythm and structure of language within the literary space. The maps are beautiful graphical portraits of text like youve never seen before. Sound Transit, a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography, contains a library of recorded sounds from cities all over the world. Users can plan a sonic journey from A to B, and the site builds an aural itinerary in mp3 format. Its a distinct and remarkable method of mapmaking that diversifies our experiences and perceptions of space and time. Cartography has found its way back into the hands of the people, people who are turning this universal tool into what Penn calls an instrument of love. And as more people use this instrument, the hope is that well come to better understand where we are and where were headed. As Penn emphasizes so succinctly, We have to, as a society, realize our interconnectedness. Hear hear. The Internet welcomes explorers to a whole new world of mapping, including the following links: Common Ground Community Mapping Project: commongroundproject.ca; Strange Maps: strangemaps.wordpress.com; and Sound Transit: soundtransit.nl; Bio-Mapping: biomapping.net. Of all the maps Julie Nixon has come across in the past year of a feverish fascination in all forms of cartography, shes been most captivated by the stunning infographics of artist Stefanie Posavec.