I just wanted to share an interesting book by Katherine Harmon in which she presents many different types of maps - real and imaginary. She wrote in introduction to the book: “I sense that humans have an urge to map - and that this mapping instinct, like our opposable thumbs is part of what makes us human. (…)

Maps intrigue us, perhaps none more than those that ignore mapping conventions. These are maps that find their essence in some other goal than just taking us from point A to point B. They are a vehicle for the imagination, fuelled up and ready to go. We look at these maps, and our minds know just what to do: take the information and extrapolate from it a place where they can leap, play, gambol - without that distance province of our being, the body, dragging them down.” (p.10-11).

Reading these lines, I was wondering if that was true only of maps, or if this could also be true of texts - novels, poems, etc. that can let our minds wonder… and maybe leads us to create our private maps which are referred to by Hall (whose essay is published in the book):

“We are all creating our private maps. Like Mercator, we are not discovering entirely new worlds; rather, we are laying a new set of lines down on a known but changing world, arranging and rearranging metaphysical rhumbs [compass points] that we associate with successful navigation. To each, her or his private meridians. To each, a unique projection.”

Reading Hall’s and  Harmon’s quotes in the light of our discussion on physical and virtual spaces, I asked myself if the choice of virtual space, and the frequent metaphors to maps (site maps, navigation, etc.) is not related to our attraction to maps. Of course, it also points to the constructed aspect of space, and how many layers can be intertwined in our experiences of spaces (physical and virtual). One visitor was telling me the other day that the installation made him thought of how in some ways despite his physical embodiment, his attention is most of the time focused on virtual spaces (emails, chat, blogs, online forums) in which he interacts, often several at the same time… and how he realized that he thought of himself as more present to these spaces that the physical space he was located - a theme richly documented by Turkle (1995).

Last, Harmon’s book contains several examples of maps made of text : Howard Horowitz’s maps  and Edwin Morgan’s map of Scotland which of course resonate in the context of this conversation on space and discourse.

al

That’s the intriguing title of an article by Julian Kiverstein (who teaches philosophy at the University of Edinburgh) in MapMagazine:http://www.mapmagazine.co.uk/index.cfm?page=984F1E34-BDF5-2379-71075D0184E53D92&articleid=40 where he discusses the Sciart initiatives (which started in 1999 as a consortium aiming to foster collaboration between artists and scientists). Sciart’s main goal is “to enhance public understanding of science and artist”. Sciart’s main goal was “to enhance public understanding of science. Artists are invited to employ their creative skills in making scientific ideas comprehensible to a wider audience”. Jackie Donachie, one of the contributor to this blog has been involved in this program and a lot of work has involved interactions with scientists. I am sure she will have many insights to share with us.

Yet Kiverstein questions Sciart’s goal, or more specifically the implicit relationship it presupposes between science and art where the artists are seen as in the service of science, as translators of the complex scientific discourse.

“What could artists teach to scientists? what scientists could learn from artists?”

“A lot” replies Kiverstein who highlights how scientific discoveries are not only rational processes but require true creativity. Scientists solve puzzles, often by means of leaps of imagination. He gives as an example James D Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of DNA as one of the many scientific discoveries to have resulted from a creative leap of this kind. Kiverstein raises an important issue regarding the nature of collaboration. He argues that if one defines collaboration as the “sharing of the labour involved in a given task”, it seems that in many of the Sciart projects, one cannot talk of collaborative work. Artists are often only finding “ways of dressing the scientific ideas in visual clothing”.This question is key to our project with Aileen: is she involved in the project only as someone who can help me dress my ideas in a “visual clothing” or is the project an exchange between my data and analysis of them and her understanding of my work and her understanding of visual arts, which leads me to revisit and deepen my analysis and interpretations. Here is my take on it: I originally mentioned her my idea of developing this project because she had this expertise in visual arts. Yet, in the background there were also our frequent discussions about teaching and how to create learning environments (both in the classroom and through technology) where students could play with the concepts taught in class and reflect on them. Our conversation quickly becomes a dialogue where Aileen’s questions and suggestions led me to redefine my interpretations and revisit my assumptions.In fact, yesterday we met to work on this project and discussed what this collaborative work really meant and how it might leads to a redefinition of disciplines. I am very curious to have your views on this issue, including Aileen’s perception of our “collaboration”.:-) Thanks.Cheers, al

Yesterday, I read an article in the NY Times on sense of touch http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/science/09angi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss. The article argued that although often forgotten our sense of touch is more powerful than vision and hearing (we can detect with our finger a bump of just one micron high while we can see anything smaller than 100 microns) and biologically primary (even extremely simple-cells organisms react to tactile inputs). Touch is primary in a deeper sense:

“Touch is so central to what we are, to the feeling of being ourselves, that we almost cannot imagine ourselves without it. It’s not like vision, where you close your eyes and you don’t see anything. You can’t do that with touch. It’s always there.” (Chris Dijkerman, a neuropsychologist at the Helmoltz Institute of Utretch University).  

Yesterday when I read it, I just thought it was an interesting article, but today in the train, sitting nearby someone, brushing someone as I was getting off, I thought of how this connected with the BSWW project.

In public spaces, in physical spaces, our sense of touch is always called upon. We are in space embodied and surrounded by shapes, walls, objects, people. Our haptic sense is less obviously involved in our online interactions. That might be one of the underlying reason why people say that online we miss the “human moment” - part of this human moment being the interpersonal, emotional relations, but part of it being also the non-verbal communication which involves haptics.

In one way it is because we are always embodied and situated - but it does not influence our online interactions the same way.The haptic sense is still called upon: because we are sitting somewhere, because we type and the keyboard is at our fingertips. Yet, it’s not directly involved in our interactions with people: I don’t push you because I’m trying to avoid another person, I am not stepping on your toes by mistake while we are having a coffee, I am not talking with you squeezed among a crowd of people in the train at 6:30 PM.

In that sense, the affordances of a physical space seem to be radically different than those of a virtual space and I am not sure how haptic affordances can be re-enacted, recreated. (This, by the way, is not a problem. My point is not to argue that virtual space should perfectly mimic physical space).

What is interesting is that the changes in the practices in fact brings back the sense of touch in our online interactions. Indeed, as noted in a previous post, and as shown for example by Laura Forlano’s work, increasingly people interact online but in a public context. They go and work in a co-shared space, in a coffee shop, in a park… and their haptic sense is re-engaged.  

Note that our interpretations of space are social and cultural: how close can we be? how far apart should we be? see Edward T. Hall work on proxemics and personal spaces. 

Cheers, 

al   

 Contemporary artists question our perceptions of affordances, interrogating the functions of objects and the meaning of situations. One might think of the extreme questions by surrealists’ works such as  Marcel Duchamp’s fountain or Rene Magritte’s “This is not a pipe”. A similar questioning is at the core of Claudia’s work on chairs: what is a chair? Is a chair an object that affords sitting? Then what does it  becomes when you hang it from the ceiling, when you put it on stilts and take a way the sitting part, or when you make a cascade of  chairs? http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/a/34724.html  I also interpret Sophie Calle’s Prenez soin de Vous as an exploration of the “affordance” of the phrase “take care of yourself” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/16/artnews.artWhat does this phrase afford to Sophie Calle? She does not know. She does not know how to interpret it and thus she asks 107 women to interpret it for her - to tell her what they read, what they understand, what they feel. Does this phrase affords “support”, “caring”, “affection”? For the author of the words, if you take the literal meaning it does, for all these interpreters it does not.Yet this might show the difference between texts and artifacts: artifacts afford in the sense that they suggest and/ or limit actions; affordances are not infinite. Text can be endlessly interpreted and in some ways there are no limits.Then you’d tell me does it make sense to talk about the affordances enacted through discourse? I guess it does as here we are not looking at the content per se, at its interpretation, but at the discursive practices and how they help creating a sense of space that trigger some type of interactions and allow the building of a sense of shared identity. As you can see, I am exploring here. Any thoughts and comments are welcome. Thanks. al