International Journal of Cartography Special ISSUE: Call For Proposals

The Commission for Art & Cartography of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) seeks submissions for a special issue of the International Journal of Cartography to be published in the Spring of 2024.⁽¹⁾ We seek a diversity of contributions that explore how dialogues and practices in art and cartography can create generative points of contact. Submissions may take a variety of forms, ranging from full length research articles to shorter creative interventions that rely heavily on visuals and other forms of media.⁽²⁾ Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Art practices that use concepts, grammars, or ideas found in cartography
• Cartographic practices that are informed by dialogues or practices in contemporary art
• Geographical visualization methods informed by humanistic modes of inquiry
• Theoretical interventions that open new possibilities for art and cartography
• Creative approaches to cartographic visualization
• Mapping projects that draw from participatory art
• Historical work that explores connections between art and cartography
• Research that investigates how community groups engage with art and cartography

If you are interested in contributing to this special issue, please send an abstract of 200 words or fewer to taien[AT]yorku[DOT]ca by August 15th, 2022. Potential authors will be contacted by September 1st, 2022, and essay drafts for peer review will be due by January 30, 2023. If you have questions or want to discuss ideas ahead of the deadline, please email!

For more information on submitting to the journal, please see: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=tica20 

⁽¹⁾Articles that make it through peer review earlier may be published online ahead of the print version of the issue.

⁽²⁾Audio-visuals and other forms of media will be made available through an accompanying special issue website 

Other Places

This is an interesting project which is ‘A series celebrating beautiful video game worlds’.

Considering the advent of interactive technologies such as Augmented Reality and explorations of the interaction between maps and games (see previous post and look up the Dresden ICC worskhops), these realities might not be too far away from merging into our own.

 

http://www.otherplaces.co.uk/

Here is one of those worlds in the collection.

 

 

Stamen Design reinvents cartographic design

If you love the functionalities of online mapping services such as OpenStreetMap and Google Map, but you are fed up with their graphic design, the company Stamen Design has developed something for you: three background maps that you can use to render your own OpenStreetMap mashup. These three maps are: (1) Toner, a sharp high-contrast black and white that reminds me futuristic urban planning maps; (2) the more conventional Terrain which looks more like a shaded relief; (3) and the beautiful watercolor (my favorite) which is described as follows: “Reminiscent of hand drawn maps, our watercolor maps apply raster effect area washes and organic edges over a paper texture to add warm pop to any map.” Since these maps use Open Source data (from OpenStreetMap) and are licenced under a creative commons licence, it would not be surprising to see them (and others) more and more frequently on the web, which would be great!

NEU-YORK

This artfully crafted map by Melissa Gould is a thoughtprovoking experiment – a narrative map, covering a fiercly discussed topic of alternate history: What if the Nazis had won World War 2? An extract from the artist’s comment, available on the project website: “NEU-YORK is a cautionary meditation, suggesting what the local geographical reality might have been like had victorious Nazis succeeded in bringing the Third Reich across the Atlantic Ocean in 1945. At the same time it is an exploration of psychological transport, place, displacement and memory. This re-imagining of the city plays with comparison and misrecognition, exploring the coexistence of past and present, fiction and reality.”

For more information, map samples and an overview see: http://www.megophone.com/neuyork.html

Cybercartographic Atlas of Canadian Cinema

A first version of our Experimental Cybercartographic Atlas of Canadian Cinema is now available. If you have a HIGH SPEED Internet connexion and a recent version of SAFARI or FIREFOX, you can explore it (unfortunatelly, due to the advanced, standards compliant nature of the technology powering the atlas it is currently NOT accessible with Internet Explorer. Note: If you only have Internet Explorer you can still explore the Google Map Mashup of Canadian Movie Theaters at the same address).

The overall goal of this EXPERIMENTAL atlas is to better understand the influence of cinema in the construction and dissemination of geographic identities. To reach this goal, this atlas maps Canadian cinematographic territories, including the territories of film production (e.g. shooting location), of film audience (e.g. revenues of films), and of film action. Simultaneously, this atlas serves as a laboratory to explore new forms of cartographic techniques inspired by cinema, including jump cut framing, and audio-visual mapping.

Vertiginous Mapping by Rosa Barba

Vertiginous mapping provides a stimulating journey in space and time to the mine city of Alkuna of Forgotten somewhere in the North. Artists Rosa Barba uses an interactive – almost real – collage map to navigate through her – almost real – imaginary world. We never really know where we are, when it takes place, what we see, and what we hear, but we really enjoy the experience.

For Vertiginous Mapping, her first web-based project, Rosa Barba draws upon a collection of film, images, texts, and audio that she compiled and created while on a residency in Sweden in the Spring of 2008, weaving together facts and footage with fabricated elements to invite the viewer on a pleasantly perplexing journey. North of the Arctic circle, Barba shot 16mm film in a city that must be relocated due to ground instability caused by massive mining in the area. A large crack in the ground (seen in a film of a computer simulation as a red line dividing the city) will overtake the community in 15 years if the current rate of mining continues. The actual city, renamed by Barba to Alkuna (“Nordic mythology”), was built in the 1950s as a highly-planned, climate-adapted, model community, where building was successfully coordinated with terrain in order to mitigate the cold winds. (http://www.diaart.org/barba/intro.html)

Thanks to Nils Plath forn pointing us to this great project.