Week 2
This week we started looking over some maps and how cartography is working it's way into art, discussing how cartography is making an impact and how artists are using maps to address social and personal issues. These class discussions really made me think about how much maps are being used and how I never really noticed how much they are being used as an artistic medium. Now I can't NOT see them! I think what really hit this idea home for me was the fact that I was able to relate some of these cartographic ideas to the things I encounter in my everyday life. For example when we were discussing the difference between graphs and maps, and the context between the two. It made more sense to me to relate them to two of my favorite video games.
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Harvest Moon: Back to Nature
(grid based game play) |
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Viva Piñata
(map based game play) |
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One game, a farming based RPG ("role playing game" for those dont know gaming acronyms) is very linear. Although you can choose the way to farm your land and make your living, everything is very... geometric. You farm your land in square plots, you encounter certain life events in a particular order and no matter how you live your "life" the end result can happen one of two ways. Predictable, cut-and-dry, a grid based game that is overlayed on top of the environment which gives you a limited amount of interaction with your world and the people around you. The other game however I think is completely "map" based. Alas another "farming" based RPG (I seem to be attracted to games that make light of monotonous daily chores?) you develop your garden to make it more attractive to various species of "wildlife"... okay I use that term loosely... it's a bunch of happy little pinatas... but you get my drift. I see this as more of a map based game because aside from the fact that there is a boundary on your property, you can develop it any way you want. And the construction of trees, houses, ponds, grass etc., or conversely the destruction, is changing but it always has a base effect on the world. Basically you make an impact there whether you intend to or not. Of course some of this always has to do with game plot and other external elements, but I hope you understand my analogy.
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| Black City - Julie Mehretu |
We also discussed in depth and artist named Julie Mehretu. I think that seeing how another artist dealt with the use of cartography in art in "real time" was a great experience. It really stressed all the points of the article we've been reading and discussions we've been having. I think the culmination of thi was a discussion we had about how "all maps are cognitive". We recognized that cognition was defined as thought process and that through maps, these processes are all documented. But it almost seems like a catch 22 in Mehretu's work. You can really see the thought process through her mark-making but her work seems so abstract and ambiguous that you really can't tell what she is thinking at all. Which from the looks of it seems to be her MO. Everything has a different meaning to somebody else and her lack of explanation is her way of portraying her art.
For the homework this week, we are supposed to be whittling our ideas down and trying to potentially come up with a final piece. Our homework was and exercise to take a map and modify it in some way to make it mean something else, as fas as that was another meaning to a person or place was undefined so it really made you think about what maps of different places or things mean to you or to different people. I'm going to do some research on different types of maps and how to incorporate them into my self-defined theme of emotion and expression. I am still unsure if I am going to make these more abstract or literal works and to what degree I am going to individualize them.
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