From the carthopraphic View to the Virtual
Christine Buci-Glucksmann

This text analyzes the cartographic view from its birth to its most recent, utopian and virtual modalities. Since the map as artefact is a plateau (in Deleuze's sense) with several strata and openings, that outlines a new kind of vision - that of a projected infinity seen from above - and new kinds of abstractions, the abstract as a diagram. This Icarian view is thus a world-regard that relates to territories, a regard-passage that is descriptive and constructed. During this time of globalization and of the culture of flux and of instabilities, marked by a global time that is becoming more and more machine-like, will the map become the model of the virtual? Through surfaces, topologies, artefacts, and archives, we will examine this world-eye as a panopticon of the ephemeral with its strategies and its aesthetics. [more]

1. New Visibilities 2. The Contemporary Cartorama 3. An Esthetic and Political Model of the Virtual 1. The Topologies: 2. From Artifices to Artefacts 3. Surfaces