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Themesicon: navigation pathMapping and Texticon: navigation pathArchive/Map
 
In Transit (Pinsky, Michael), 2001InterMaps (Celis, Ismael), 2003Conversation Map (Sack, Warren), 1997
 
Conversation Map (Sack, Warren), 1997
 

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of interpretative maps of the world, in a critique of the predominant view taken by the political world map, in that global data—often military in origin—displayed in a graphically simple way, produce new constellations and representations of ‹world›. [41]

2.Transformation of real space on a map: Michael Pinsky's «In Transit» (2001) project on the relativity of distances in a big city is based on travel times from A to B, so that the geography of a city (London in this case) seems variable at different times—the city as a function of experienced time, as it were.

3.Mapping data on to real space—augmented reality: recording real perceptions can create a real map here in the form of a psychogeography of the city and its mental spaces. This was based on the Situationists' practice, who in 1975 published a «Guide psychologique de Paris» on the subject of «discours sur les passions de l'amour.» This was demonstrated more recently by the «PDPal«(2002) project by Scott Paterson, Marina Zurkow and Julian Bleecker.

4.Mapping date in data space: as well as mapping real space, the concept of ‹mapping› also applies to distributing data within a given system of co-ordinates that does not necessarily have to have a spatial,

 

physical counterpart. Ismael Celis's «InterMaps» (2003) project maps communication within a social network of relationships between friends or colleagues, dynamically and in real time, as a multi-user map. But each participant's view of this network is individualized, and centred on their own IP address. Thus they are all moving in the same data space, but always see the relationships as presented on their screen differently.

Mapping as a collective process

The banal fact that we may well see a conversation quite differently according to whether we are deeply involved in it or just listening leads to linguistic analyses that have high hopes of new insights from graphic presentation. For example, some projects display spaces for electronic discourse. One of these is Warren Sack's «Conversation Map» which is more interested in content and semantics. It is a complex illustration of a Usenet newsgroup discussion during the American George Bush/ Al Gore presidential campaign, and can thus become a self-reflection tool: «I propose the design of technologies like the ‹Conversation Map› as technologies of the self (cf. Foucault): a means for a group to reflect on its

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