[Synapse elist] Mapping discussion - July

[Vicki Sowry]

Hello List

Welcome to July's discussion. Please welcome our guests and don't be shy
about posting!

TRACKING CHANGE: CONTEMPORARY CARTOGRAPHIES

In the closing years of last century, the assumed objectivity of
cartographic representation came under serious challenge, driven by
increasingly accessible mapping tools grounded upon revisionist approaches
to history, geography and culture. Artists - as is often the case - became
the Œresearch and development¹ arm of these new approaches to mapping,
charged with capturing and representing the exponentially increasing banks
of spatial, cultural and social data held about and throughout our world.
 
For the month of July we will be looking at the changing landscape of
cartography and surveying the innovative work being produced at the
cross-roads of art, mapping, geography and the social body.

DISCUSSION GUESTS
 
ALLARD VAN HOORN investigates the language of representation to understand
territory and its manifestations. He is the founder of the Platform for
Urban Investigation (PUI), a nomadic cross-disciplinary research facility
investigating local urban environments alongside architects, designers,
choreographers, theatre makers, musicians and visual artists. The PUI
collaborates with the Rijksakademie Amsterdam and it¹s RAIN Networks.
www.allardvanhoorn.com
 
SIMEON NELSON established himself as an artist in Australia and Asia in the
1990s, before moving to London in 2001. In 2007/08 he was the first-ever
Artist in Residence at the Royal Geographic Society, which culminated in an
exhibition of his work, Cryptosphere. He is currently working on
international commissions, collaborations and exhibitions and holds the
position of Reader in Sculpture at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.
www.simeon-nelson.com
 
CHRISTIAN NOLD is an artist, designer and educator working to develop   new
participatory models for communal representation. Since graduating from the
Royal College of Art in 2004 he has led many large-scale participatory
mapping projects, including Bio Mapping, which has been staged in 16
different countries involving over 1500 people. He is currently based at the
Bartlett, University College London. www.softhook.com
 
ESTHER POLAK is interested in the visual and documentary possibilities of
Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Her AmsterdamREALTIME project (2002) was
one of the first large-scale art explorations of GPS mapping, whilst her
2005 project, MILK, won a Golden Nica at Ars Electronica. Her current work,
NomadicMILK, continues her broader goal of using GPS not just for making
comprehensible visualizations, but also for telling human stories.
www.estherpolak.nl 
 
ÚRBANSITAN LABORATORY was founded in 2005 by Ásta Olga Magnúsdóttir and Anna
María Bogadóttir, a duo of urban adventurers exploring and experimenting
with the connections between people and the physical and informational
dimensions of the cities they inhabit. They live and work in Cape Town and
New York respectively (but are currently united in their ultimate hometown
of Reykjavik) and their work is presented internationally.
www.urbanistan.org 
 
JEREMY WOOD was born in San Francisco and raised in Berlin and Oxford,
before gaining his MA in Fine Art at Saint Martin's in London, where he
still lives. He has worked across the fields of drawing, sculpture, and
experimental photography. In 2000 he began using satellite navigation
technology and, for the past half-dozen years, has used GPS to track his
daily movements and create a personal cartography.
www.gpsdrawing.com/jw.html



Regards
Vicki