Key Pages
Home |-- |
Projects |
-- |
Archaeolog |
Archaeography |
Archaeopaedia |
MetaMedia Lab |
-- |
Bjørnar Olsen |
Michael Shanks |
Timothy Webmoor |
Christopher Witmore |
-- |
SOFTbooks@chiasme.com |
Critical Studies in New Media |
RSS
Mapwork aptly foregrounds attention to two principle phenomena which must be acknowledged in utilizing cartography for archaeological practice (or in other fields which, like arch., rely upon the 'Map' as a methodological and inscriptional touchstone). Firstly, and in the more general understanding of media as transformation/translation, maps work by inscribing the selected experiential phenomena of a landscape/site/locale/city/building into the leanness of lines of multi-dimensional graphic encoding. Work is done by the cartographer 'in-the-field' to create the transportable medium (the map) which may be brought back to whatever removed location in order to fill-in as that topological-experience (see mediation). However, by virtue of an encompassing representational epistemology which grants the graphical coding of a map mimetic exactitude, the map is routinely situated on its own, as the ersatz landscape/site/etc., and ontologically privileged as a source of interpretations in its own right. This is accepted and common practice - it is, arguably, the very usefulness of the map - yet it removes the map from what is 'represents', and thereby creates a closed-circuit of map-interpretation::interpretation-map. The reality which originally gave impetutus to the map becomes removed from the interpretive-representative equation (beyond interpretation). The purpose of 'Mapwork', then, is to semantically tag this active process of transformation/inscription of an experiential reality into the graphical encoding of a cartographic map.
Secondly, beyond a reflexive recognition of this transformative relationship of our methods, Mapwork calls attention to the very manner in which maps work or operate. Drawing from ideas of 'practical navigation' from Pierre Bourdieu to Alfred Gell and Tim Ingold, the common sensical argument is put forward that maps work by an integral relationship between the 'objectivity' of the coordinate map (or any shorthand encoding for space) and the 'subjectivity' of the experience of space (for detailed argument, see Webmoor Journal of Social Arch. 5(1):54-86 or [link]). Maps work for navigation and as a 'representation' by a (largely routinized and uncounscious) perpetual movement between experiential space and mediated space of the map. By re-integrating the reality that is indexed by the 2-D/3-D map, mapwork opens the signifying loop to encompass both the reality and 'representation' which underly the usefulness and the very operation of maps.
Posted at Dec 09/2004 06:28 PM:
Chris Witmore: This notion of mapwork, according to Tim, intersects with Latour's notion of circulating reference in that it emphasizes the need for the reiteration of the movement between the material context of the site and the inscription. In this way, the inscription of the map does not become closed off as the definitive mediation of the material conditions of the site. It is situated as the inscription of a series of transformation it is, always to be reworked, questioned, and rearticulated. Refer to multiple fields
Posted at Dec 13/2004 10:58 AM:
tim webmoor: But more broadly than concerns with media, mapwork attempts to theorize general - everyday and 'cartographic' - spatial practices. How do we get on in the world and how do we think about spatial relationships.
Return to Key Themes
Go to symmetrical archaeology Home
