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This is my final dissertation for the MA in Fine Art I am taking during 2001-2003 at Cardiff School of Art.

The Use of Maps in Contemporary Art

What are maps?
Functions of maps
A brief history of maps
Mappae mundi
The changing nature of maps
Maps and Truth
Maps and the future
Maps and Art
Myth
Maps as signs and codes
Maps and allegory
Death of the Author
Conclusion
Bibliography

Denis Cosgrove defined mapping thus:

'a graphic register of correspondence between two spaces, whose explicit outcome is a space of representation […] to map is in one way or another to take the measure of a world, and more than merely take it, to figure the measure so taken in such a way that it may be communicated between people, places or times.' (Cosgrove, 1999:1)

This 'measuring of the world' happens not only in maps, but is also apparent in artists' use of maps.

Recently artists have become increasingly interested in maps. In 1994 there was one of the first major exhibitions of artists using maps: Robert Storr's show entitled 'Mapping' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This featured 30 artists including Jan Dibbets, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Claus Oldenburg and Robert Smithson. In the following year, a show curated by
Peter Fend called 'Mapping, A Response to MoMA' at America Fine Arts,
featured 50 artists, only one of whom had been represented in Robert Storrs Show. A later show which built on the success of Mapping was 'Cartographers' at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw in 1997. (Curnow, 1999)

This study examines the use of maps in art, looks at why there has been an increase in artists interest in the use of maps, and what use they make of maps. This will be put into context by looking at a brief history of the development of maps and the ways maps are used today and the meanings they have accrued.

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Maps are used to define and declare territory, and describe relationships between that territory and 'what comes with it' (Wood, 1992:10). For example, maps link territory with taxes, with annual rainfall, with geology, postcodes, likelihood of flood or famine, with who owns it.

Maps also explain the world in a broader sense, they claim land not just physically but psychologically. Mapping an area involves learning about it - observing, counting, analysing and prioritising. The raw data is interpreted or
filtered through the culture, the area mapped is fitted into the orders of that
particular culture. It becomes 'safe', defined, explained, both physically and
emotionally. The power it holds (whilst unknown) to frighten is defused.

They are created to serve a purpose - to declare ownership, as aids to navigation, as political propaganda, to plan invasions, to describe or to hide the physical landscape. Maps are social constructs. No matter how 'pure' or 'innocent' a map seems, it is nevertheless a product of the culture which produces it.

The huge difference in scale between the map and what it represents means that symbols are nearly always bigger than the feature they represent. Not everything can be included on the map, so decisions must be made about the relative importance and usefulness of particular information. The physical act of trying to render a sphere onto a flat piece of paper inevitably requires some distortion. How that distortion is made (what information is sacrificed) depends on what the final map will be used for.

The Map is thus NOT the Territory. As Alfred Korzybski, a Polish count and mathematician, wrote in 1933:

'The map is not the territory; the map doesn't cover all of the territory; and the map is self-reflexive (it becomes part of the territory)'. (Philosphere, 1999-2002)

Lewis Caroll, in Sylvie and Bruno, 1889, said:

'and then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to a mile. It has never been spread out.…the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own
map, and I assure you it does nearly as well'. ( Caroll, in England, 2002:3)

This highlights the often forgotten fact that there are differences between the map and the territory. Maps are frequently seen as mere reflectors of the truth. However as the McArthur map shows, we make many assumptions when we read maps. The McArthur map was made by a disgruntled Australian called Stuart McArthur in 1979 who was tired of seeing the world with Australia at 'the bottom'. (ODT Inc, 2003)

Illustration: McArthur's Map

The sense of dislocation felt when we see such a familiar map presented 'the wrong way up' is indicative of how familiar ways of looking become.

An artist called Tom Van Sant made a map called GeoSphere Image in 1990. It is the first cloud-free satellite map of Earth, showing the world as it appears from space. The image was first published in 1990 as a title page for National Geographic. It is the largest-selling single image of the world. (Van Sant)

Illustration: Geosphere Image, Tom Van Sant

This map comes as a shock after the politically divided world maps that we have become used to seeing. It highlights how the world is made of land masses and water masses, not political powers. This perspective has only
been available to us since the first pictures of earth were beamed back from space in the 1960's.

James Corner, in his essay 'The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention' opens up the function of mapping, from being purely a passive recording activity, to being interpretative, and then beyond that being provocative:

'The function of mapping is less to mirror reality than to engender the reshaping of worlds in which people live' (Corner, 1999:213)

Mapping can be used to reveal and realise hidden potential, and can thus be a 'productive and liberating instrument' rather than just an archiving activity.

Corner says 'mappings discover new worlds within the past and present ones' (Corner, 1999:214)
Maps can include historical events, local stories, natural processes, economic and legislative conditions, political interests as well as information about the physical environment.

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The earliest extant map dates from the 6th Century BC. As Brian Harley says, in The History of Cartography:

'There has always been a mapping impulse in human consciousness, and the mapping experience - involving the cognitive mapping of space - undoubtedly existed long before the physical artefacts we now call maps'. (Wilford, 1981:13)

The 6th century BC map is a Babylonian clay tablet , on which Earth is shown as a flat circular disk surrounded by ocean and several mythical islands. The Babylonians mapped their property lines and city walls with some accuracy, however outside those boundaries, what they didn't know they either ignored or invented - a habit which lasted at least until the 20th century. ( Wilford, 1981:13)

A Nuzi clay tablet map from Northern Iraq dates from 2300 BC. This map is more primitive, but shows settlements, streams, hills and mountains. It is also oriented: it shows three cardinal points, east (at top), west and north. Clay tablets from around the same period contain surveying notes for the purpose of taxing property. (Wilford, 1981)

A Chinese map from the 4th Century BC marked locations of buildings in the five mausoleums of Emperor Wang Cuo, his empress and concubines. The map used symbols and numerals to show distances, and is the oldest numeral-bearing map in the world.

Other maps were found in Hunan Province dating back to 2nd Century BC, they were surprisingly accurate and detailed. The maps also used standardised symbols and legends, e.g. names of all provinces are in squares, and cities and villages in circles. (Wilford, 1981)

Just before the birth of Christ, Julius Caesar put his son-in-law Agrippa in charge of a mapping project which resulted in the 'Peutinger table' in the third century. The Peutinger table was similar to today's London Underground map in that it eschewed much geographical information and concentrated instead on information useful to the traveller - for example major roads were drawn as straight lines, with no scale or attempt to show their true course, however distances are written in, as are cities, temples, lighthouses, spas, bathing facilities, forts and imperial residencies. The geography is completely distorted, but the landmarks and distances would have proved useful to a medieval traveller. (Wilford, 1981)

Illustration: Peutinger table

Even with the very oldest maps it can be seen that mapping conventions were being established. The conventions have become so accepted now that we are at risk of failing to see them.

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Mappae Mundi were 'maps' made in the middle ages. The name comes from
the latin mappa, a tablecloth or napkin, and mundus, the world. Mappa Mundi were however very different from straight cartographic representations.

As George Kimble said:

'the great majority of these mappaemundi are to be regarded as works of art and not of information. Their authors were creating something very different from the modern cartographic sheet that stands on its own merits as an essentially utilitarian document, scientific in construction. They would have branded any man a fool who might have supposed that he could determine the distance from London to Jerusalem by putting a ruler across a map.' (Kimble, in Wilford, 1981:54)

Mappae Mundi were used more as a visual encyclopaedia which mapped Christian space. The maps mixed myth, Christian doctrine, traveller's tales and some cartographical knowledge. They attempt to map both time and space. They were mostly circular, orientated with the East at the top. This was similar to cartographic maps, which oriented themselves with East at the top because the sun rose in the East. However Mappae Mundi had an additional reason for that orientation - Eden, or Paradise, was located in the East.

Mappae Mundi are perhaps the closest we have to artists using maps today, in that they attempt to map not only physical space but also include another system of information, in this case Christian myth.

Mappae Mundi makers were faced with several problems. One was the location of Eden. Another was that in Paradise was the source of four rivers, two of which were identified with rivers in the real world, the Tigris and the

Euphrates, and two are still debatable - the Pison (maybe the Ganges) and the Gihon, maybe the Nile. The last was that the tree of knowledge and the tree of life both stood at the centre of Eden; in other words, they occupied exactly the same space. (Scafi, 1999)

The Ebstorf map dates from 1239. It is the largest recorded mappamundi, originally consisting of 30 sheets of vellum, measuring in total 12 feet in diameter. It was destroyed in an Air Raid on Hanover in 1943, and only survives now as a reproduction.

It does have geographical elements, such as towns (Galilee, Jerusalem) and mountains and rivers. However it also contains scenes from the Bible and ancient history. Some apostles' burial places are included, as are episodes from myths of Alexander the great, such as Gog and Magog. The whole map, (in other words space and time) is spanned by a huge Christ figure, with his head in the East, feet in the West, and Eden is shown in the East, close to his head. The map thus creates a multi-dimensional reality, through its loss of direct relationship between space and time. (Scafi, 1999)

Placing Eden on the map makes visible the divine order of creation. As Denis Wood says, 'maps construct, not reproduce, the world'. (Wood, 1992:17) Even the simplest maps, such as those showing delineations between properties, are social constructions. They show somebody's idea of where one property begins and another ends: a border between countries does not represent a physical thing, rather it represents an agreed social construct. It makes the border 'real'. Disputed borders are mapped by the respective warring countries to fit with their interpretation of where they believe their border to be. The act of mapping is an act of declaration, 'if we declare our
border to be here, its must be so'. The mapping of Paradise has the same effect, it declares Paradise as a real place on earth, attainable or unattainable.

Alessandro Scafi outlined three key notions in Mapping Paradise. One is that paradise was believed to be a real place on earth. Another is that the garden of Eden was an intermediate region, located somewhere between heaven and earth. This made the relationship between earthly paradise and the inhabited world ambiguous. The last is that there is an attempt to explain the relationship which is at once one of separation and connection - for example, earthly paradise is made inaccessible by being on a high mountain, or located past on un-navigable ocean - at the same time, it is not entirely disconnected because the four rivers flow from Eden to the world. (Scafi, 1999)

Paradise was finally 'lost' around about 1500. It was no longer believed to be of this world, in place with rational geography. It was realised that 'East' was relative, according to where you were. The increasing number of travellers returning from the East had not found Eden.

Illustration: Ebstorf Map (detail)

Ptolemy was an astronomer, mathematician and geographer who worked in the second century AD. His Geographica was what we would now call an atlas. In it used the idea of a spherical earth and also the grid system of latitude and longitude. The work was lost for many centuries but was rediscovered in the 15th century. This rediscovery during the renaissance facilitated the break with the tradition of presenting a multi-dimensional map of the world which included space and time, maps becoming specific only to the moment at which they were made. (Scafi, 1999)

Imminent changes in mapping did not mean however that the general populace no longer believed in an Earthly Paradise - in fact, Christopher Columbus at one point thought he had reached it when he reached South America. Eden still appeared on maps, but on maps which were created as 'historical', as illustrations in Bibles.

'Boundaries change. The medieval attitude to the wholeness of human knowledge did not distinguish between cosmographical, philosophical, theological, mythological, historical or geographical knowledge. The disappearance of paradise from world maps points to the shift from medieval holistic way of thinking to a modern fragmented view of reality. (Scafi, 1999:70)

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'Christian Jacob describes the changing paradigm of cartographic criticism as a shift from the transparent view of the map as a neutral, informative transfer of external information into the simplified classificatory frame of the map space, conducted with the intention of achieving 'an ideal correspondence of the world and its image', to an 'opaque' view of the map which takes account of the selections, omissions, additions and inescapable contextual influences which shape the outcome of such transfers.' (Cosgrove, 1999:3)

Cosgrove goes on to say that the idea of what a map is, has changed from the static, truthful, innocent imparter of information, to something altogether more opaque, where a map is seen in context, in relationship to the world, not merely a reflection of it which exists somehow separately, in its own space.

This change in the idea of what a map is has come about for a number of reasons. Shifting political borders have made cartographers question the permanence of maps, and the use of a map which by the time it is printed may well be out of date. The end of the cold war has fragmented the soviet union into many countries, split on cultural and religious grounds. The previous divisions of political power are becoming less important than religious or cultural divisions. Cultural globalisation is occurring, where some private companies have become richer than some nation states, and more extensive, reaching across old national borders to influence people worldwide. The development of the internet has facilitated globalisation, enabling worldwide communication (and movement of money) without (in most countries) the intermediary of media companies /or states controlling information.

Development of hypertext has also challenged the boundaries of text, potentially destroying the 'frame' of text but giving a fluidity to our access to and intake of information.

Powered flight has enabled many millions of people to fly over the world, and see it laid out before them 'as if' a map, but of course not a map. This new way of seeing has called into question cartographic conventions. Aerial photography has called into question the codes, signs, conventions, colours and rules by which maps worked (Cosgrove, 1999). For example, contrast a map of a state, with its official insignia, crests, flags etc, with the Tom Van Sant satellite view of the earth.

The first images beamed back from space in the 1960s changed humans' perceptions of the earth: rather than looking from within themselves out at the world, or looking down on the earth from a plane, they could now see images of the world from outside it - and perceive the whole of the earth at one glance. These images highlighted the uneasy relation between the flat map and the spherical earth.

New technology has changed methods of mapmaking. Digital imaging enables near-perfect sampling, inclusion, exclusion, and falsification of images / maps.

Digitalisation of images has also enabled 'spatially referenced data to be generated, manipulated, and illustrated with a speed, accuracy and facility quite unimaginable within the memory of even relatively youthful people'. (Cosgrove, 1999:6)

On the high street you can now purchase individually commissioned maps, with customised scale, area, location, orientation and information, so that the customer can to some extent make their own map, and is no longer hidebound by an arbitrary area / key chosen by the publisher.

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As Mark Monmonier says in 'How To Lie With Maps',

'because most map users willingly tolerate white lies on maps, its not difficult for maps also to tell more serious lies. Map users generally are a trusting lot…' (Monmonier, 1991:1)

This is perhaps especially true in the UK where the public have come to inherently trust Ordnance Survey, one of the oldest and most relied upon map making agencies in the world.

Ordnance Survey had military origins - their surveying of Britain began in 1791, starting with the South Coast, in response to fears that the French revolution might sweep across the channel. It is still a UK government agency, although now it covers most of its operating costs through sales of products, services and copyright licenses.

The photo below [you will have to look in the book!] shows two 'mosaics' of Ayrshire, produced by the Ordnance Survey in 1946. The aerial photo on the left shows a military airfield near Prestwick, which has subsequently been removed from the photograph bypainting in. Ordnance Survey spread the costs of production of the mosaics by selling them to the public, however certain sensitive military information had to be removed from the maps. Sometimes cotton wool was photographed to look like clouds over the sensitive detail.

Ordnance survey not only leave sensitive sites off maps but are also known to build errors into their maps to keep track of copyright infringements, as revealed in an article by Joanna Bale in the Times in March 2001:

'Ordnance Survey gets things wrong on purpose. This alarming fact emerged yesterday when the Automobile Association agreed to pay £20 million in an out-of-court settlement after it was caught plagiarising Ordnance Survey maps. OS cartographers apparently put faults, such as tiny twists in rivers and
exaggerated curves in roads, in dozens of their maps to trap plagiarists. These helped to prove that millions of published guides, which the AA claimed as its own work, were straightforward copies.' ( Bale, 2001)

Monmonier makes the point that:

'Not only is it easy to lie with maps, its essential. To portray meaningful relationship for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or a video screen, a map must distort reality.' (Monmonier, 1991:1)

As previously mentioned, to render a sphere onto a flat piece of paper inevitably requires some distortion. How that distortion is made (what information is sacrificed) depends on what the final map will be used for.

The Mercator map was developed in 1569 by Gerardus Mercator, to aid navigation. It greatly enlarges the poleward areas. It is designed so that
so that if one draws a line from A to B, and measures the angle q from the meridian (line of longitude) to the rhumb (A to B) line, and one follows this bearing from A to B, one will eventually reach one's destination. (Monmonier, 1991)

(For illustrations of Mercator, Peters and Snyder Projections see Monmonier, M (1991) 'How To Lie With Maps', Chicago, University of Chicago Press)

This map has distorted the land mass areas in order to be useful for navigational purposes. This map has as a result been used for propaganda purposes:

'political groups intimidated by Communist ideology have revelled in the Mercator's cartographic enhancement of the Soviet Union'. (Monmonier, 1991:96)

In the 1970's Arno Peters published a new world map which overcame this distortion, being an equal-area projection, that is, the areas of the countries are in proportion to each other. One can see, for example, how much bigger Africa is than is assumed from the Mercator projection. The Peters projection became popular especially with religious and international development organisations (p97) as it called attention to the distorted portrayal of Third World nations in the Mercator projection.

The Peters projection caused many people to believe that cartography was stagnating, and that it had become too developed-world-centric.

In reposte, John Snyder, a US Geological Survey cartographic expert, produced another equal-area projection, demonstrating that 'areal fidelity does not mean shape fidelity'.

An example of maps' contingency is the mapping of the coastline. The cartographer must 'choose' where to draw the line of the edge of land: in reality the coastline is a zone between low tide and high tide, between the lowest ever annual tides and the highest ever tides, constantly changing as land is claimed by the sea or deposits left by the sea. The cartographer needs to establish what level of detail of the shape of the coast should be included. He could attempt to include each grain of sand, or each rock, or each rock pool, or each bay. In theory the drawing of a coastline could be infinitely long. The focusing on this reveals that all mapping is carried out through a set of rules, set in response to how the map will be used, also through technological limitations and aesthetic grounds, and overarching all that the 'rules' of the culture in which it is made. (Cosgrove,1999)

Maps necessarily reflect the chosen orders of the culture in which they are produced. Foucault describes two sets of rules or orders in a culture:

''The fundamental codes of a culture - those governing its language, its schemas of perception, its exchanges, its techniques, its values, the hierarchies of its practises, establish for every man [...] the empirical orders [...] within which he will be at home. At the other end of the extremity of thought, there are the scientific theories or the philosophical interpretations which explain why order exists in general, what universal law it obeys […] and why this particular order has been established and not some other.' (Foucault, 2002:xxii)

He then goes on to describe another region / domain between these two, the role of which although intermediary is also fundamental: the domain in which culture frees itself from its accepted orders, discovers that these orders are not necessarily the best ones or the only possible ones, relieves itself of these orders, to discover that, underneath, there really is an order: that order exists. Artists working with these maps are frequently working within this intermediary area.

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Alessandro Scafi, in his essay 'Mapping Eden: Cartographies of Earthly Paradise', outlined the concepts of microspace and macrospace. Microspace
refers to the empirical world around us, while macrospace is a cosmological category - in other words it refers to the origin and structure of the universe. Microspace is that space in which we have a good idea of how things relate spatially to each other. (Scafi, 1999)

Maps so far have been used primarily microspatially, that is, to map what is empirically known. What was previously macrospace, for example, the relations between the planets, the origins of the universe, has now to some extent become microspace. Eden or Paradise was 'lost' as more of the physical world was measured and it became obvious that it was not locatable.

As outlined previously, with new digital technology, information which is used to construct maps is now much more fluid - maps can now be custom built around a client's specification.

Artists have also started using maps in more fluid ways - to include information that previously would not have found its way onto a map (see later information about Swaaij and Klare's 'Atlas of Experience' ).

Recently maps have been made of non-physical spaces, for example maps of cyberspace; although cyberspace is not 'tangible', it is quantifiable. Different approaches include mapping only the network, or mapping the network and relating it to geographical space.

Illustration: Alpha World

The Map of Alpha World shows a map which actually IS the territory. It is the map of a virtual city created on the internet by users from all over the world.

The Cobot MUD map 7 shows the social relationships inside a Multi User Domain (MUD) or textual virtual space (a precursor of the internet chat room). The data is conversations between players in the MUD LambaMOO as observed and measured by a software bot.

Illustration: Cobot MUD map

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As previously mentioned, increasing numbers of artists are using maps, producing both physical artefacts which use / refer to maps and making works which engage with the process or concepts of mapping.

Jane England, in her introduction to the show "The Map is Not the Territory", suggests that this is a response to the globalisation of culture, that the undermining of traditional borders, facilitated by increased opportunity to travel (and exacerbated by increased global communication) has led artists to try to define their place in the world'. She quotes Stine Hoholt:

'individuals in a world where traditional geographic hierarchies and borders are in rapid transformation are forced to navigate according to their own experiences'. ( England, 2002:2)

This suggests that artists are using maps in order to locate themselves in relation to the surrounding culture. This can be a useful way of reading work but needs to be narrowed down for each particular work to become truly useful.

Artists do use maps for a variety of reasons and in a variety of ways. Perhaps most simply, they use maps as symbols, for example to portray power, or sovereignty over territory. For example Jan Vermeer included a map in his painting 'The Artist's Studio' of 1665-7, perhaps suggesting the area where the reputation of the artist could spread (England, 2002:2). The map also refers to the political situation: it is of the 17 provinces of the Low Countries before their partition in 1581. (Kunsthistoriches Museum Vienna)

Primarily artists use maps to call upon the orders of the culture, in order to disrupt / critique them. Often the art works, whilst dealing with a particular small area, have a more expansive intention. They widen that critique to all cultural codes, not just those as used in that particular map.

For example, Simon Patterson's piece 'The Great Bear' takes the London Underground tube map and replaces the station names with names of famous cultural figures throughout history, through to the end of the 20th century.

The Great Bear brings together layers of information and obfuscation, working as a map in that it enables the viewer to locate themselves in relationship to other 'things', but in this case the relationship is not with underground stations but with cultural icons. (This piece or work is dealt with in more detail later.)

Artists also use the process of mapping, as opposed to just using images of maps, for example the Situationists.

The Situationist International was formed in 1957. They used 'detournement' and the dérive to produce art works / performances about the physical and psychological relationship between man and the urban environment. 'Detournement' (in English 'diversion') was 'plagiarism where both the source and the meaning of the original work was subverted to create a new work'
The dérive ('drift' in English) was an activity in which the deriveur would wander aimlessly through the city soaking up its ambiences. The term psychogeography was used to describe the study of geographical settings effects on the psyche. The Situationists produced psychogeographical reports based on the results of their dérives. (Elliot, 1999)

Conceptual artists were interested in the activity of mapping. In response to Robert Storrs 'Mapping' show in 1994, in 1995 Peter Fend curated another show called 'Mapping, A Response to MoMA' at America Fine Arts, New York. This show had 50 artists, only one of whom had been represented in Robert Storr's Show. (Curnow, 1999)

The emphasis of Fend's show was different. He wrote about Storr's show that it was just:
About paintings, sculptures or drawings which happen to include maps. It has nothing to do with mapping….But the task of a show called Mapping is to deal with an action of charting or planning a domain or space, within which action would take place - real world actions, or at least performed actions.' ( Curnow, 1999:256)

Lawrence Wiener made verbal word maps, for example these from 1969:

'The Joining of France Germany and Switzerland by Rope, The Arctic Circle Shattered and Floatable Objects Thrown into Inland Waterways One Each Month for 7 Years.' (Curnow, 1999:257)

Artists also use maps not just to explore the process of mapping, but also to make a record of experience, or to document a performative art. For example, Richard Long and Hamish Fulton who produced maps of their walks 'adopted the map and the photograph as evocative substitutes for first hand experience' (Lippard, 1983)

Artists use maps to bring into the work an area from outside the work - to claim an area within a piece of work in order to comment on it. In the same way that maps have been used to claim physical space, maps are used in art to lay psychological claim to concepts.

Artists use maps to place the work (and the artist, and the audience) in relation to the world: this piece of work is commenting about this area, this piece of work is being witnessed in this place, but is pointing to that place. For example, Joe Scotland takes cloth items (e.g. napkins, handkerchiefs) and embroiders on them maps from where they originate - for example the works 'Hyatt Hotel, Hastings Circa 1992', 'Ramblers Handkerchief Circa 1949'. The fabric may be stained, the napkin might already have the hotel name embroidered on it. The map ties the artefact to the place, the title dates it. The work becomes archival, a souvenir, which brings back memories of the time and location.

Artists also use maps to create new worlds and territories: fictional / mythical territories which purport to be outside us but which are perhaps pointers to what is 'inside'.

Writers have long since used maps as a way of clarifying a fictional world.
For example, Jonathan Swift's map of the Island of Balnibarbi in Gulliver's Travels, Robert Louis Stevenson's map of Treasure Island, Arthur Ransome's map in Swallows and Amazons, E.H. Shepherd's map in The World of Pooh,
and Tolkein's map in The Lord of the Rings. (England, 2002)

Illustration: Jonathan Swift's Map of Balnibari

Louise van Swaaij and Jean Klare, two Dutch cartographers, produced the 'Atlas of Experience' (first edition 1997). The book shows a selection of maps, with each map reflecting human experience and emotions. For example, 'the Passion Map includes villages named "Expectation" and "Wait", while the accompanying text quotes Roman philosophers and the lyrics of Gerry Lee Lewis. ' (www.amazon.com, 2003)

Other maps include the Ocean of Possibilities, the Swamps of Boredom, the City of Boom and the Airport of Escape. The work at first glance conforms to our idea of an ordinary map, it is only when looked at more closely that the place names add new levels of meaning to the map.

In World Political, Layla Curtis fictionalises the world, taking a map of the world and swapping countries of similar shape and size, making us question the nature of borders. She has made similar work using road maps of Britain, cutting the map up and reassembling it with the cities towns etc relocated in relationship to the outer edge. Curtis questions our acceptance of usual boundaries, ensuring that we look closely at the maps. She says:

'by subverting the map I undermine the trusted yet subjective system of mapping. In the series of collaged maps I dissect, dismember and collage maps to create new, hybrid maps. By creating a fictional combination of cities, towns and roads within a familiar form, I am denying the viewer the ability to properly satisfy their urge to locate themselves and thus questioning the very simple presumptions about what comes next and who belongs where. In this re-shuffled world new and often un-easy juxtapositions are created, referencing both modern and ancient international relationships.' (England, 2003:11)

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Barthes describes myth as a mode of signification (not a concept, or an idea, or an object), but one on a more complex level than a 'simple' sign. A myth occurs when a signifier (in this instance ink on a page) comes together with a signified (for example the concept of the London Underground network) to make a sign, (for example the London Underground Map), and the sign then goes on to act once again as a signifier, (in this case the idea of an easy to use transport network, also an easily navigable city). It is this last part which is the myth, in other words a second order signification, an idea that there is another layer of meaning to the sign, frequently an ideology.

If we were to apply this theory to The Great Bear, we can see that Patterson both maintains and parodies the myth from the London Underground Map, disrupting it and adding new layers of meaning to it. The key is absent, the station names are absent, you can no longer use the map as an aid to navigation around London. Most people viewing Patterson's map however will be aware of its origins, and as such it continues to hold the myth outlined above. However there is included new information - the philosophers, the football players, the film stars. The myth could be seen as the idea that it is possible to construct a map of cultural figureheads, that there might be an easy way to systemise such an unruly concept.

The Atlas of Experience works in a similar way. The signified being the concept of the Atlas, the sign the book of maps which represent the world, the Atlas going on to promulgate the myth that the whole world can be represented in a book, that in fact this book somehow 'contains' the whole world. This notion is challenged when one realises that the Atlas has no relationship to the physical world; it does however, to human emotional experiences. The myth is revisited, but changed, that a book could define / explain / contain all human experience.

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Denis Wood, in his book 'The Power of Maps', describes maps thus:

'Maps are about relationships. The map is a highly complex supersign, a sign composed of lesser signs, or more accurately a synthesis of signs; and these are supersigns in their own right, systems of signs of more specific or individual function […] the map image as a whole is the supersign, and the various systems it resolves to are its constituent signs, signs that can only have meaning in relation to other signs.' (Wood, 1992:124)

Wood describes how a map is a conglomeration of codes. He defines a code as that which assigns the signifier to the signified, in so doing creating a sign. So in order to understand a map, we must be able to understand the codes which make up the map. A code is:

'an interpretive framework, a set on conventions or rules, which permits the equivalence of expression and content. A code legislates how something may be construed as signifying, as representing something else . In this respect signs are encoded in formation and decoded in interpretation; and it is only through the mediation of a code that signification is possible. ' 38

Wood defines two types of codes: intrasignificant and extrasignificant.

Intrasignificant codes are indigenous to the map, they are the codes which the map exploits. They can be iconic, linguistic, tectonic, temporal and presentational. ( Wood, 1992)

Extrasignificant codes operate 'outside' the map itself, in other words are codes by which the map is itself exploited. They can be thematic, topic, historical, rhetorical, and utilitarian. The following examination will focus on intrasignificant codes, as extrasignificant codes form the context in which the art is read, but are to the greater extent beyond the concern of the artist making the work.

'The map is simultaneously an instrument of communication - intrasignification - and an instrument of persuasion - extrasignification and its propensity toward myth.' (Wood,1992:141)

Artists engage in a number of ways with these codes.

Intrasignificant codes

Iconic codes assign graphic expressions to geographic (or topological) features, for example, the use of the colour blue to represent the sea. Robert Smithson made work which explored iconic codes, by 'making three-dimensional art based on graphic systems for representing three dimensions in two: the perspectival and the cartographic.' (Curnow, 1999:257)

For example, he made a work in the Site / Nonsite series in which a map of Pine Barrens, New Jersey is displayed along with an arrangement of bins containing sand from it. The site is Pine Barrens, the Nonsite is where the work is displayed. On the map is a note: 'Tours between the 'Nonsite' and the 'site' are possible. The red dot on the map is where the sand was collected.'

Smithson calls our attention to the relationship between the graphic expressions used and the reality. Sand may well be a major feature of the site, but being the ground material is probably not even mentioned on the map. (Curnow, 1999)

Linguistic codes are the way in which places are named, terminology and the nomenclature used.

The Underground map obviously uses the names of the stations, whereas the Patterson map uses the names of famous figureheads. The code that Patterson used to assign the names to the stations is not clear:

'[…] I didn't alter it arbitrarily, it has my own logic but it is a completely personal, idiosyncratic one'. (Patterson, in Pirman 1997: 22)

Kathy Prendergast plays with the linguistic codes in her piece 'Lost' (1999), in which she takes a map of the United States and removes all the place names which do not begin or end with the word Lost (for example Lost Lake, Lost Creek, Lost Springs), thus revealing the discrepancy between locating something on a map but continuing to call it 'Lost'.

Lothar Baumgarten explores use of words (in this case river names) in maps. He has made works in which he lists names of rivers. He had works in a show in 1996 called 'Under Capricorn / The World Over', which was held simultaneously in Amsterdam and Wellington, New Zealand. In Amsterdam(Watershed) he listed the rivers of La Gran Sabana region which covers parts of Venezuala, Surinam and Brazil. In Wellington he listed new Zealand Rivers. The South American names were in Pemon, the New Zealand name sin Maori. These works showed how 'vestiges of lost languages and cultures, or of those in retreat from dominating cultures, are more likely to survive in the names of rivers because they are not property.' (Curnow, 1999)

Tectonic codes 'configure graphic space in relation to geodesic space'. (Wood, 1992, p124). They are the codes assigning the plane of the printed map to the sphere of the earth.

Richard Long took these codes (in this case the graticule) and used them in his 1974 piece 'Eight Walks', in which he '(mis) takes the Ordnance Survey for a road map; walking its graticule as if it were a set of paths, he traverses an area eight times: four north to south, four west to east.' Long then exhibits the map with the routes overscored and the elapsed times noted. The variation in time 'is a precise reflection and transference, into time, of the particular differences of each line of ground, at a constant walking pace.' (Curnow, 1999)

Long calls into question the codes used to make a map, the assumptions that are so easy to make that everything on a map is a representation of the territory, as opposed to an abstract set of rules imposed on the territory. He takes the abstract code - the graticule - and uses it in a new set of rules which he devises, which determine his activity and the finished art work.

Temporal codes fix the map in time.

Maps are interpretations of space at a moment in time. Measurements are taken at a moment in time, and the map finally produced at a specific time.
Even if the measurements for a particular map are made over a period of years, the map is finally issued on a particular date, so will be assumed to be correct on that date.

The London Underground map has changed over the years, being first produced in 1933, since when there have been many iterations, for the most part due to refinements in the actual design of the map, but also due to stations becoming disused. Other information also places maps in time as well as the date - for example in September 2002 London Underground produced a Tube Access Guide, which gives people who have mobility problems information about how to plan a journey without using stairs or escalators. This kind of information dates the map as being produced recently, since there has been increased awareness of disabled peoples needs.

Artists use maps to refer to time or disassociate themselves from time. Patterson's Great Bear refers to the past - the London Underground map, and all the time which is inherent in that. It finishes at the end of the twentieth century - there are no cultural figureheads named after then, not surprising as it was produced in 1992. However, Patterson also leaves no stations unnamed, thereby 'fixing' the map in time, denying it future development. The work, or the concept, becomes 'closed', apart from the mystery still to be solved: why did the artist give that station that particular name? The Atlas of Experience is datable only in the style in which the maps are produced. Otherwise, being a map unrelated to space and instead to experience, it points both backwards and forwards.

Satomi Matoba is a Japanese artist living in both London and Hiroshima. She digitally manipulates maps to bring together geographies and by implication cultures - in her work 'Utopia' she creates a map which brings together Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima. She disrupts the usual boundaries - temporal, physical, cultural and emotional. Her work points to an idealised future, or possibly a Utopia separate from this world and time. (England, 2003)

Presentational codes bring together all the other signs and codes to give an overall coherency.

The font used in the London Underground map, for example, is Johnstons 'Underground Railways Sans'. It was a very influential typeface, being adapted later to produce Gill Sans. The typeface is clean and clear, with sans serif letters - a modernist type, reflecting the new age, printing and mechanical reproduction, rather than being derived from handwriting. (King, 1999)

Presentational codes also include the production values of the map - is it throwaway, free, a framed limited edition print? Joe Scotland's works are individual artefacts. Lawrence Wiener's verbal maps are concepts or ideas rather than physical entities. The Atlas of Experience maintains a clean and bland appearance, beguiling us into feeling comfortable, before disrupting our thoughts with the strange place names.

Extrasignificant codes
These operate 'outside' the map itself, and can be thematic, topic, historical, rhetorical, and utilitarian. As such they are to a large extent not related to the artist intention at the time of making the work.

Art works can come to have new significances as times change: for example Jugoslav Vlahovic's 'World Cow' is seen (in the UK) differently since the foot and mouth outbreak and the rise of BSE. Vlahovics made the work in 1974 in Yugoslavia. (England, 2002:13)

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'Allegory is the extrinsic union, or the conventional and arbitrary juxtaposition of two spiritual facts - whereby it is posited that this image must represent that concept.' (Croce, 1913:112)

'In allegorical structure, one text is read through another, however fragmentary, intermittent, or chaotic their relationship may be, the paradigm for the allegorical work is thus the palimpsest.'' (Owens, 1980:1053)

To use the term 'allegory' to describe all presentations of one thing by another, would be to render the term so unspecific as to be useless. The Patterson map lends itself to being designated 'allegorical' - the layers of information/ implication being so complex.:

- the immediate icon of the London Underground map, a map which enables one to locate oneself in relationship to the tube system, it includes the key to the different coloured lines etc

- substituted station names, of the philosophers etc, which allows one to locate oneself in relation to philosophers, film stars etc - this enables one to place both oneself and the artwork within a cultural context and a time period (late 20th century / early 21st century). This 'layer' of information points at another one - the question of what system has been used to choose a particular type of figurehead for a particular line, and a particular name for a particular station.

- the title 'The Great Bear' brings in another layer of meaning, that of star constellations, and with that, the myths which go along with the name of The Great Bear constellation. These myths are only extant in the work if the viewer knows them: the work changes depending on who reads it.

One's mind skips from one layer of information to another - from the Underground, to the solar system, to popular culture and back again.

Craig Owens also associates appropriation with allegory:

'Allegorical imagery is appropriated imagery; the allegorist does not invent images but confiscates them. He lays claim to the culturally significant […] in his hands the image becomes something other. He does not restore a original meaning that may have been lost or obscured, […] rather he adds another meaning to the image.' (Owens, 1980:1053)

Artists using maps appropriate the maps, and their meanings, and re-interpret them, subvert them, critique them. Patterson, for example, 'confiscates' the London Underground map, and imposes new layers of meaning onto it, the original meaning becoming lost or obfuscated, and it is taken over by the assumed / pretended / false 'map' of figureheads, purporting to give us a real life 'classification' or systemisation, but in reality giving us a reflection of the system inside of the mind of the artist, and questioning how we, as individuals, would systemise the same information:

'People say "Why did you put this person there, I would have put somebody else". Obviously I placed the names in a way that is particular to me, but I like the feeling that nothing is fixed. Its almost like a game that people can participate in. The idea of the viewer finishing the work is important. It is not a code that people have to decipher. The meaning is not prescribed.' (Patterson quoted by Pirman, 1997:22)

Another characteristic of allegory is 'to pile up fragments ceaselessly, without any strict idea of a goal' (Owens, 1980:1054)

James Corner, in his essay 'The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention' described how:

'the surface of the map functions like an operating table, a staging ground or a theatre of operations upon which the mapper collects, combines, connects, marks, relates and generally explores.' (Cosgrove, 1999:213)

Patterson made the remark below about another of his works, 24 hours (24 paintings based on the periodic table) in which the names of the elements are replaced with the names of stars and galaxies, but it is equally applicable in spirit to his work The Great Bear:

'Its human nature to try to make sense of the world. People feel that in order to understand something, they have to impose a structure over it to the point of mania.' (Patterson quoted by Pirman 1997:21)

Michel Foucault in `The Order of Things" expressed the unease which allegory can inspire:

'There is a worse kind of disorder than that of the incongruous, the linking together of things that are inappropriate; I mean the disorder in which fragments of a large number of possible orders glitter separately in the dimension, without law or geometry […] things are 'laid' 'placed' 'arranged' in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them, to being a common locus beneath them all. Utopias afford consolation, although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold, they open up cities with vast avenues, superbly planted gardens, countries where life is easy […] Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, because they make it impossible to name this and that, because they shatter or tangle common names, because they destroy [...] the syntax which causes words and things to 'hold together'. (Foucault, 2002:xix )

Maps are used to bring order to the world, to establish a 'common locus'.

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One of the characteristics of postmodernist work is that of the 'death of the author', or the fall from importance of the author / artist, to be replaced by the importance of the reader.

Wolff describes how a piece of work is no longer seen as a unique creation, created in isolation by the author, rather it is a manifestation of the coming together of social structures and a reflection of / result of current ideologies, beliefs and values. She describes this as 'the personal mediation of a group consciousness'. (Wolff, 1981:119)

'A text is made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures, and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody….a texts unity lies not in its origin but in its destination, the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author'. (Barthes, 1977, quoted in Wolff, 1981:117)

A map is already an object in which the presence of the artist / author is frequently minimised, many maps aiming to give the impression that they are less a personal point of view than an accurate interpretation of 'fact'. Many maps are nowadays put together by many people, with information fed into computer software which generates the final images.

We have already seen how Patterson feels that the idea of the viewer finishing the work is important. His piece is also free of obvious relationship to the artist, at first glance it gives the impression of being generated through some kind of software system / game. However on looking closer there is some kind of system behind the way the stations' names are designated: the various tubes lines are dedicated to a particular kind of figurehead - forexample the National Rail line which runs from Richmond to North Woolwich becomes the Thirty Comedians Line. We look for some reason why, when there is a doubling up of lines (for instance with the Circle and District Lines), Philosophers take precedence over Explorers. Why, at stations where several lines intersect (e.g. Paddington), does Pythagoras take precedence over an engineer, journalist or explorer? Is it simply because there is a triangle shape joining three stations at Paddington / Pythagoras? All these names, the system itself, is a reflection of the system inside the artists' head: which itself is built from the systems of order which that culture has built itself.

To a large extent the viewer is engaged in making steps towards reading the those systems of order, as resident in the artists mind, rather than creating the work oneself.

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Enlightenment thought had held that through scientific domination of nature and from release of adherence to religious and superstitious thought
man could achieve freedom from need. This idea broke down (following revolutions across Europe) and writers and artists began to explore different languages and modes of representation. There began a loss of faith in the 'ineluctability of progress' and 'growing unease with the categorical fixity of enlightenment thought.'

Modernity reflected the new world which moved faster, in which social and political change occur on a wider and faster scale, and which was characterised by ephemerality. However, modern artists "…understand [modern life's] fleeting qualities, and yet extract from the passing moment all the suggestions of eternity it contains." (Harvey, 1990:10)

In contrast, postmodernism lost this teleological viewpoint, and is anti-meta narrative or meta-theory. That is, it no longer adheres to the fact that there could be a theory through which all things are connected. The autonomy changed to heteronomy - or as Michel Foucault described: 'heterotopia' - the coexistence in 'an impossible space' of a large number of fragmentary worlds'.(Harvey, 1990:48)

Artists have discovered maps to be cultural artefacts which can be worked and reworked, which can bring about a representation of heterotopia. They have found maps useful tools with which to critique the contingent nature of reality.

As Denis Cosgrove said

'maps are […] troubling, in that their apparent stability dissolves without much prompting - their are realised as being provisional, partial, liminal, uncertain'

'it is the spatialities of connectivity, networked linkage, marginality and liminality, and the transgression of linear boundaries and hermetic categories - spatial 'flow' - which mark experience in the late twentieth century world […] culturally connections between phenomena formerly considered distinct and relatively fixed [...] have been shown to be contingent and unstable: for example the connections between workplace and community, ethnicity and nationality, diet or religious practise or identity.' (Cosgrove 1999:4-5)

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