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

Rob White’s “IBIS la bicyclette interactive” (2001) (IBIS the interactive bicycle) is an interactive installation inspired by a piece of text written by the author’s grandfather in 1909, in which he related his journey from England to Spain, through France and the Pyrenees. IBIS enables the spectator to explore that text interactively, thanks to an antique bike fitted with sensors, which gives the possibility to navigate through the time and space of the book at the desired speed.

“The social practice of travel is driven by romantic desire for a transformative symbolic experience in an other place from which one could return renewed. Tourism converted secular pilgrimage into a commodity marketed in two-dimensional images.” ¹

Michael Naimark’s work involves projects of “real-space imaging”, surrogate travel and “moviemaps” based on series of photographic images of an existing landscape taken methodically on a dolly-mounted camera: an interface and a screen allowing one to “browse” backward and forward on a grid of predetermined paths and see, for instance, Aspen by car (Architecture Machine Group, MIT 1978-1980), San Francisco by air (SF Exploratorium 1987) and Karlsruhe by tram (ZKM 1990-1991). In See Banff ! (1994), he used a stereoscopic camera and the latest computer-driven video disk technologies to present the work through the peep-hole of an old kinetoscope. Interestingly, by texture-mapping bi-dimensional pictures onto a 3D immersive mode of representation, he melts photographic space and cyberspace.

¹ Margaret Morse, Nature Morte: Landscape and Narrative in Virtual Environments, p.202-203 in Immersed in Technology, Art and Virtual Environments, edited by Mary Ann Moser. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, 1996.

Matthew Paris, "Itinerary from Bar-sur-Seine to Troyes" (verso) and "Itinerary from La-Tour-du-Pin to Chambéry" (recto), circa 1255, 36 x 25cm: in The history of cartography vol.1, plate 38

Medieval maps like Paris’ Itinerary typically only featured straight paths of trails, along with stages acting as operational indications for the purpose of pilgrimage. They were more like memorandums prescribing actions to be done.

The rise of the modern scientific discourse between the 15th to 17th century saw geographical maps progressively moving away from depicting itineraries and suites of actions to a more “theatrical” view (Atlases were then called “theaters”) where different elements are juxtaposed and are the product of an observation. Itineraries disappear, and heterogeneous elements are gathered to form a picture of the “state” of current geographical knowledge. From then on, maps have been red as a system of isolated geographical loci, and no longer as a series of operations retracing a narrative or helping way-finding.

I have had a renewed interested in travelogues, these narrated films or videos about travel, after watching Trans (2005) by Claudia Ruiz and Gijs Verkoulen. This film is a non-verbal 25-minute documentary – a “visual poem” – about a week-long journey by train from Moscow to Beijing, passing by extreme differences in countryside, travellers and natives. During this 7 day journey the viewer can experience how the eye and the mind unnoticeably accommodate to changing perspectives. “As time goes by shifting of railwaytracks and power lines get fascinating, you will get delirious as the Gobi dessert passes by and by”. Filmed traditionally at the beginning, then slowly and progressively becoming more of a mesmerizing aggregation of long tracking shots with little disturbance to challenge the alertness of the viewer.