Mapping Cyberspace |
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Mapping Cyberspace |
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"This will be a city unrooted to any definite spot on the surface of the earth, shaped by connectivity and bandwidth constraints rather than by accessibility and land values... Its places will be constructed virtually by software instead of physically from stones and timbers, and they will be connected by logical linkages rather than by doors, passageways, and streets."William J Mitchell City of Bits
"Within two weeks even the idea of a city never entered his mind. It was as if he had walked under the millimetre of haze just above the inked fibres of a map, that pure zone between land and chart between distances and legend between nature and storyteller."
Michael Ondaatje The English Patient
Project Terms of Reference
Aims & Objectives
To explore the fields of mapping and representation, both current and historical.
To examine the boundaries between the real and the representational.
To discover which aspects of representation are of most significance.
To adopt the view that "the map is a subjective, not an objective, representation, and that artistry has a role to play in such a representation" and to seek advice accordingly.
To assess the current metaphors for the territory ('global village', 'cyberspace' , 'metaverse', 'information superhighway/infobahn', 'city of bits' etc) to discover their appropriateness.
To produce an interactive graphical navigational aid. to enable users to know 'where they are' in cyberspace.
To personalise the device for each user
To document the process.
Skills required:
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There is an enormous body of work on cartography; the scope of it is too wide to be addressed in its entirety by this project. What is intended, however, is to draw upon the various strands of the discipline that prove relevant to the aims & objectives (above).
"The relationship between humans and maps is worthy of study: the map is a store of knowledge that can 'add value' to human activity. It can be used to order the territory itself, as well as to order our knowledge of it."When the territory is cyberspace, the geography is continually in flux. At one level, there are no centres or boundaries, no up or down, north or south. The space seems to float in an amorphous cloud, an electronic veil over the face of the earth. Yet at the human interface, where the user interacts with the space, geography undoubtedly exists. The most common problem users experience is feeling lost, not knowing where they are in relation to anything else 'out there', not knowing where they have come from or where they might be about to go.Dorling, D., & Fairbairn D. (1997) Mapping: Ways of Representing the World. Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.
When we 'visit' a website, what happens to our perception of the world? Are we actually journeying out to foreign lands, our PC terminal the controls of our vehicle? Or are we just downloading a program from a remote machine into our system where it executes?
The former is the subjective experience and the latter the objective knowledge we have of the machinery. The map of such movements and interactions should not be just a passive representation, although representation, indeed, is one of its functions. Such a map should be personal to each user, charting their course and perhaps even offering advice.
Bibliography
The final product will be web-based, either a Shocked Director presentation or Java/CGI scripted (or possibly a combination). Equipment required for the presentation will be a standard architecture PC or Macintosh with web-browser (Netscape 3.0 or better with Shockwave plug-in), a minimum of 16Mb of RAM and internet connection (without firewall). No constraints on availability of resources/equipment are envisaged.
Schedule for First Semester:
As a hybrid product of both art and science, any map should be judged accordingly. Is it of a pleasing form? Is it (or, theoretically, could it be) functional? The finished product should satisfy both these criteria in equal measure. Neither should detract from the other. The whole should be greater than the sum of the parts.
As a user interface, is the device helpful in empowering the user? Is it "a store of knowledge" that can "'add value' to human activity"? Can it be "used to order the territory itself, as well as to order our knowledge of it"?
Has the final product been underpinned by substantial research of sufficient breadth and depth?
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This page created 6th November 1997 byDawn Leeder
All comments are welcome