On cities, mapping, psychogeography and the experience of places.

“What would happen if street corners could talk? Some people believe that bricks and mortar can record sound vibration – that if you could unlock this you would be able to hear the history of the area played back to you.”

Daniel Belasco Rogers spent months recording stories told by local residents of the Greenwich area. In August 2006, the “Peninsula Voices” project will find out what stories are written through the pavements, using handheld computers connected by GPS, making it possible to walk round the area and hear the voices of those who lived there.

www.planbperformance.net/dan

French artist Pierre Joseph constructed ‘memory maps’ of Japan and the Paris métro without prior consultation of actual maps of the area. They are not maps to be followed literally, but, in common with the mid-thirteenth century mappamundi and contemporary Matthew Paris’ Itinerary Map showing the route to the Holy Land by depicting stage points along the journey, they are an aid to “self-distancing from the world in preparation for the contemplative ascent” ¹. These itineraries engage the viewer’s subjective interpretation, and reverse modern habits of map-reading: “instead of moving from the map to an objective world, we move from the map to a deeper textuality.” ² Indeed, reading a map can be an extraordinary vehicle for the imagination and multiple interpretations.

¹ Marcia Kupfer, quoted by Tim Scott, Next on the Left, or: ‘What Good is a Map if you Know the Way?’ in Media Mutandis . London : NODE.London, 2006, p.102.
² Michael Gaudio, quoted by Tim Scott, ibid.

“Mapmaking fulfils one of our deepest desires: understanding the world around us and our place in it. But maps need not show just continent and oceans. ¹” By nature maps are inherently spatial, yet they are often used as a metaphor for mental processes. Ultimately, maps are a mean to an end: unlike mere pictures, they carry additional functions and purposes, they transmit information. “Maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, processes, conditions, or events in the human world. ²” Most importantly, all maps are ‘indexical’, i.e. their meaning is dependent for their truth on their context. A Ptolemaic map from the second century A.D. (illustration) looks remarkably accurate for its time whereas the Ebstorf map featured in the illustration below presents a somewhat malformed view of the world, apparently against the sense of progress. Yet it serves religious interests as well as topographical ones; it is embedded in conventions and symbolism of early Western Christian mappaemundi (maps of the world). Such maps, dubbed ‘T-O’ divided the world by three major waterways symbolising the cross, with east at the top and Jerusalem at the centre.

Mental maps versus physical cartography

Mental maps are a personal way of representing geographical space: instead of considering a place in its absolute sense, a mental map looks at it in relation with other places emotionally close. Each mental map is particular to the the environmental perception of its author, the images they have of their own life, known places and the way they are connected.

Cognitive maps shows not just where we are and what we know, but who we are. Because of their serendipitous quality, they have a great potential for the discovery of relationships not explicitly intended; they allow appreciating the internalised spatial structure upon which a person is operating. The most significant differences are those between people (or the same person at different points in time) of the same places. “It’s possible to take one geographical area and to demonstrate that it really consists of a set of overlapping places depending on which group of people we are considering. ³” Mental maps are thus interesting indicators of how we interpret our neighbourhood.

¹ Katharine Harmon, You are Here, Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination . New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 2004.
² Harley and Wooward , The History of Cartography , 1987, p.16 quoted by David Turnbull, Maps are Territories, Science is an Atlas. University of Chicago Press , 1994, p.3.
³ David Canter, Psychology of Place. Palgrave Macmillan, 1977, p.68.