»A literary-geographical reading can change our
understanding – not only of books, but of the world we
live in. It creates knowledge. Through literary geography,
we learn more about the production of places, their
historical layers, their meanings, functions and symbolic
values. If places emerge from a combination of real
elements and fictional accounts, then literary geography
and literary cartography can work as a very effective eyeopener.«

Barbara Piatti and Lorenz Hurni: Editorial, pp.218-223

»This special issue of the Cartographic Journal on
‘Cartographies of Fictional Worlds’ is made up of fascinating
stories, exotic places, original concepts, and a series of
media that ranges from artistic collages to high tech
geospatial applications. This diversity demonstrates
the enthusiasm that prevails within literary cartography,
as well as the complex relationships that exist between maps,
narratives and places.«

»These examples provide a conceptual, methodological
and practical base that can serve to engage in the development
of original and relevant ways of merging the conceptual space
of the map with the experiential places of the narratives.«

Sébastien Caquard: Conclusive Remarks, pp.224/225

Have a look at 8 exciting papers at:
The Cartographic Journal

I strongly recommend to have a look to these Mathematical Mountains discovered in this webpage,  But Does it Float. About them, their creator, Steven Brunton explains:

These images are excerpts from the bifurcation diagrams of various one-dimensional maps (…). Each of these dynamical systems model various physical phenomena in the real world. For example, the logistic map is a crude model of population dynamics with reproduction and limited resources, and it is often used as an example of the period-doubling route to chaos. Typical of chaotic systems, many regions in these figures exhibit self-similarity and reflect the order that emerges outof chaos.

These images were generated numerically by iterating the discrete-time maps above as a bifurcation parameter is varied. The bifurcation parameter is plotted as the y-axis (elevation), and at each elevation, the stratified layer represents the attracting set of the dynamical system for that particular choice of bifurcation parameter. Bifurcation refers to a qualitative change in the behavior or topology of a dynamical system as a parameter is varied.

(From wikipedia) Mona Hatoum (born 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London. Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon to Palestinian parents in 1952. Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum does not identify as Lebanese. “Although I was born in Lebanon, my family is Palestinian. And like the majority of Palestinians who became exiles in Lebanon after 1948, they were never able to obtain Lebanese identity cards.”

Lately I’ve liked these maps called “3D Cities”: Regular ordinance survey maps, their two-dimension modified by a number of geometrical cuts forming paper depressions and elevations. We do not know what they signify, although we can guess that these are probably localized spots of violence.

Mona Hatoum 3d Maps

Here you are a video by Tate Britain, ”Mona Hatoum, studio visit.”

From wikipedia: “For me the work of the embroidered Mappa is the maximum of beauty. For that work I did nothing, chose nothing, in the sense that: the world is made as it is, not as I designed it, the flags are those that exist, and I did not design them; in short I did absolutely nothing; when the basic idea, the concept, emerges everything else requires no choosing.” Alighiero e Boetti, 1974

That’s why the sea is painted in red, pink or yellow; while they were doing their work, the artisans didn’t know what meant the area with no-assigned-colour. Although as it has been said by the expert in Boetti with whom I have visited the exhibition, they even didn’t know the meaning of the whole image.

Boetti was a conceptual artist, but his work is also visually rich and joyful. Being a coproduction, after Museo Reina Sofía, the exhibition will travel to the Tate Modern and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Highly recommended.

http://www.museoreinasofia.es/exposiciones/actuales/boetti_en.html

The Art of Mapping exhibit takes place at the TAG Fine Art gallery in London (14 – 26 November 2011) and also includes some artists talks.

Image : Emmanuelle Jacques, 2011

If you are in Montréal in October, there is an interesting series of mapping activities that are going on at the gallery Articule (actually the activities started in September…).

In a series of workshops held at the centre, participants will be encouraged to reflect on notions of social cartography –socio-demographics, urban development, the places we reside in and appropriate, places of memory, places not represented by traditional maps. The aim of the project is to inspire people to think creatively about cultural and artistic spaces, what they represent in daily life, and what the notion of neighbourhood means today.

Even if you missed it this year, you might be able to psrticipate next year since this is supposed to be a yearly activity.

Thanks to Cecilia Chen for point me to this art and community mapping activity.

This book complements the growing body of literature exploring the relationships between arts and cartography . It is distinct from the previous ones by its main focus: The multiple ways of representing a database. In the context of the exponential increase of the volume of geospatial data available, addressing this issue becomes critical and has not yet received much attention. Furthermore, the content of the database – environmental issues in the city – gives a strong social and political texture to the project.

Among the different activities proposed, there will be a session entitled Mapping environmental issues from above & from the ground. “Building on a previous workshop entitled “Mapping Environmental Issues: Arts and Cartography Cross-perspectives” (http://mappingworkshop.wordpress.com), this session aims to bring together scientists, artists, practitioners and students interested in mapping environmental issues from different perspectives, using different (and unconventional) approaches.”

Deadline for submitting abstracts: Aug. 2nd, 2011 (more details here)

The working group of Art & Cartography had a very creative and inspiring workshop at the International Cartographic Conference (ICC) in Paris. During this activity, 26 people from all over the world with different backgrounds and interests related to arts and maps came together to walk through five Parisian areas in order to map the visible and unvisible frontieres. This was a very stimulating event as illustrated by some the following pictures: