February 23, 2004

Early Mapping

In her dissertation on The Use of Maps In Contemporary Art, Anna Oliver mentions in passing the earliest map:

The earliest extant map dates from the 6th Century BC. [It is] a Babylonian clay tablet , on which Earth is shown as a flat circular disk surrounded by ocean.

Sounds familiar.

I wonder what options were available to the Drift Table designers for the vieport? The disc format seems to point to early maps as an inspiration, but it doesn't stop there.

Like early maps, the Drift Table isn't a tool for navigation, but an aid to contemplation; a spatial take on Memento Mori if you like. It doesn't say, 'Here is Wolverhampton' in the sense that an Ordance Survey map does; it says, 'Think about Wolverhampton-ness' in the same way that Mappae Mundi used spatial cues to frame the cartographer's agenda, incorporating mythology, religion, even time.

Similarly, the interactive aspect of the Table - the viewport shifts its 'position' according to objects placed upon it - mirrors the non-spatial cartography of early maps with their orientation of places in relation to a point of significance, like Jerusalem in the case of Christian maps.

There's something, too, about the emphasis the Table's tight focus places on here and elsewhere that recalls the almost exploratory nature of early maps - whatever can be seen in the viewport is known, everything else to be guessed at. Literally, given my terrible grasp of British geography: I have no idea what's next to our example town of Wolverhampton, so the Table might as well bear the legend Here Be Dragons.

Or, at least, I think these thoughts are relevant - I really ought to stop speculating and wait for the thing to arrive.

Posted by Jack on February 23, 2004 03:09 PM
Trackback url: http://www.submitresponse.co.uk/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/575
Location: (Here)