Tomorrow I’ll be guest-presenting in Joseph Heathcott’s Archive/City class, which shares many interests with my own Archives/Libraries class and my various map-related and urban-history-related classes. Joseph asked me to talk about archives and cartography, so I figured we’d address the relationship between those terms in seven variations:
- archives of maps;
- the “archive” of cartographic epistemology, or how the Foucauldian “archive” that maps embody has evolved over the centuries;
- carto-archival art;
- how history is “mapped” or “archived” on maps themselves (or, maps as material objects that trace the passing of time);
- the use of maps to archive — or as a substrate for archival arrangement;
- curating and mapping archived data not to trace history, but for purposes of prediction; and
- using maps as forensic tools.
Here’s what we might discuss:
Map Archives
- NYPL Map Division
- Los Angeles Public Library’s John Feathers map collection
- David Rumsey map collection
- 50 Maps Exploring the History of New York (via MapsMania)
History of Cartographic Epistemology (Wood)
- Statism (“seeing like a state”) –> positivism (maps as indexical representations of the world) –> constructivism
- Presumed “primitivism” of indigenous cartography (Wood) and materiality of the “map archive” in a non-print-based culture
- Critical Cartography: questioning the “indexical” quality of maps, the objectivity of GPS, and the reification of data
- Maps as living documents
- Deep mapping (which we’re discussing in my Maps class this week) as a form of archival mapping:
- Michael Shanks’s work
- Deep maps in the Atlas of Design
Carto-Archival Art
- Joseph’s students were asked to read Benjamin Buchloh on Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, which Richter began in the 1960s:
- Atlas = book that organizes geographical or astronomical knowledge
- Montage as construction of meaning, rather than mere arrangement of forms
- Perceptual shock / trauma / ruptures between objects and their representations creates “mnemonic desire”
- mid 1920s: shift toward archival and mnemonic functions of photo collection
- Buchloh’s article’s myriad allusions: Benjamin, Kracauer, Warburg, Rodchenko, Hannah Hoch, Barthes…
- Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, which he began working on in the 1920s
- Cornell’s Mnemosyne project
- Richter mixes amateur found photos, journalistic and advertising photos: allows for juxtaposition of various themes — say, “family” — as they’re privately and publicly/commercially
- Reina Sofia Atlas exhibition
- Deep Storage exhibition
- Lots of map art
- Much interest in the materiality of the map itself, which leads us into…
History “Mapped,” or “Archived,” on Maps Themselves
- Wood argues that maps grow by accretion
- Addenda pasted onto (tipped in to) Sanborn maps
- Latour on continual revision of maps
- Zanny’s map critique on Pedro Lasch
Using Maps to Archive – or As a Substrate for Archival Arrangement
- Discuss my own mapping classes: Urban Media Archaeology + Maps as Media
- NYPL Map Warper
- NYPL Building Inspector
- NYPL Space/Time Directory
- Data visualization rendered in geographic form
- Joseph’s students were asked to read about Laura Kurgan’s / SIDL’s Million-Dollar Blocks
- We’ll watch a portion of Kurgan’s lecture in my Spring 2015 UMS lecture series [24:00 –> ]
- Joseph’s students were asked to read about Laura Kurgan’s / SIDL’s Million-Dollar Blocks
Curating + Mapping Archived Data for Purposes of Prediction
- Global Ecological Land Unit Map:
- ArcGIS EcoExplorer
- ArcGIS’s Landscape Layers
- Predictive Policing
Using Maps as a Forensic Tool