Brain Pickings

Experimental Cartography: The Map as Art

What tattoo art has to do with fashion, vintage atlases and Nazi concentration camps.

We’ve always been fascinated by maps — through various elements of design, from typography to color theory to data visualization, they brilliantly condense and capture complex notions about space, scale, topography, politics and more. But where things get most interesting is that elusive intersection of the traditional and the experimental, where artists explore the map medium as a conceptual tool of abstract representation. And that’s exactly what The Map of the Art, a fantastic Morning News piece by Katharine Harmon, examines.

Matthew Cusick, 'Fiona’s Wave,' 2005

Cusick's oversized collages are painted with fragments of vintage atlases and school geography books from the golden era of cartography, 1872-1945.

Corriette Schoenaerts, 'Europe,' 2005

Schoenaerts, a conceptual photographer living in Amsterdam, constructs countries and continents out of clothing.

(You may recall Schoenaerts from our Geography, Topography, and Everythingography issue.)

Arie A. Galles, 'Station One: Auschwitz-Birkenau,' 1998

A grim allusion to Nazi concentration camps, these drawings, based on Luftwaffe and Allied aerial reconnaissance film, were made over the course of a decade.

Qin Ga, 'Site 22: Mao Zedong Temple,' 2005

In 2002, China's Long March Project embarked upon a 'Walking Visual Display' along the route of the 1934-1936 historic 6000-mile Long March, and Beijing-based artist Qin kept tracked the group’s route in a tattooed map on his back. Three years later, Qin continued the trek where the original marchers had left off, accompanied by a camera crew and a tattoo artist, who continually updated the map on Qin’s back.

Paula Scher: The World, 1998

Paula Scher: Africa, 2003

These maps come from Harmon’s The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography — a remarkable collection of 360 colorful, map-related visions of experimental cartography by well-known artists and design thinkers like Olafur Eliasson (remember him?), Maira Kalman (another TEDster), Paula Scher (and yet another), and Julian Schnabel, as well as more underground creatives whose art is greatly inspired by maps. The book also features essays by Gayle Clemans, introducing a richer layer of insight into the work of some of these map artists.

Be sure to read Harmon’s excellent essay below the Morning News images, which offers a fascinating look at the historical relationship between maps and the art movement, both products of the shifting political and aesthetic influences of the time.

via Coudal

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Instant Classic: Whole Earth Discipline

Ecopragmatism, or how to stop doing what we’re doing in order to avoid going where we’re going.

Between 1968 and 1972, author and activist Stewart Brand, who helped start the environmental movement in the 60′s, published the highly acclaimed Whole Earth Catalog — an iconic counterculture compendium of tools, texts and miscellaneous information, which Steve Jobs went on to describe as the conceptual forerunner of the World Wide Web.

Today, appropriately coinciding with Blog Action Day, Brand releases his long-awaited new book — Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, a sharp and compelling vision for engineering our collective future.

Brand, who has always approached environmental and technological challenges as a solvable design problems, offers radical yet viable ideas for managing Earth’s global-scale natural infrastructure in the least intrusive, most respectful but efficient manner possible.

The book tackles three of today’s most profound transformations — climate change, urbanization and biotechnology — in a way that’s part practical guide to damage control, part prescriptive inspiration for a more efficient society, part bold anthem of design-thinking. And if Brand’s track record is any sign at all, Whole Earth Discipline may well become one of the (counter)cultural classics of our generation.

Meanwhile, catch a preview of the book as Brand busts several environmental myths in his latest, fascinating TED talk at the US State Department.

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Urban Storytelling: Hitotoki

The hidden whimsy of cities, or what Parisian gardens have to do with the Tokyo subway.

We’ve always been fascinated by cities — they are living organisms whose narrative is constantly evolving. Which is why we love Hitotoki — a rather unorthodox exploration of the highly subjective cultural footprints of cities, creating a narrative map of the world.

Hitotoki is an online literary project collecting stories of singular experiences tied to locations in cities worldwide

The Japanese word Hitotoki connotes any brief, singular stretch of time. It’s roughly translated as “moment” and is comprised of two components: hito, “one,” and toki, “time.” Which perfectly captures the project’s ephemeral yet timeless quality as an anthology of vibes.

Started in 2007 as a collaboration between Tokyo design group AQ and Tokyo/Seattle-based indie publisher Chin Music Press, the project embodies that wonderful cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines that we believe is the driving force behind true innovation. Today, Hitotoki spans six cultural epicenters — Tokyo, New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, and our hometown of Sofia. (It’s okay, we’ll save you some Googling — that’s in Bulgaria, which is not to be confused with Bolivia or Botswana or any of the other surprisingly misguided geographic guesses people make, and is actually in Europe.)

Beautifully designed and encrusted with superb typographic art direction, Hitotoki is a conceptual, aesthetic and cultural indulgence like no other. Be a part of this incredible project by submitting your own story about one of the existing cities, or by applying to be an editor for a brand new city.

Meanwhile, explore Hitotoki‘s fascinating literary landscapes — whether or not you’re familiar with the city itself, these rich, vicarious experiences unravel a new whimsical world you never thought existed behind the concrete reality of the big city.

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