Eduardo Abaroa
Proposal: We Just Need a Larger World, 2008 (detail)
Construction wire, papier maché, world map cutouts and steel pins, 130cm x 130cm x 130cm
Courtesy of the Artist and kurimanzutto gallery, Mexico City
From the Uneven Geographies Show at Nottingham Contemporary.

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Denis Wood’s 2010 book Rethinking the Power of Maps includes a discussion of exhibits devoted to maps created by artists prior to 2010. A significant number of exhibits have opened since the book was published, and Denis supplies an update below.

Map Art Exhibitions, 2010-11

Long before the emergence of critical cartography in the 1980s (at the hands of Fels and Wood, Harley, Rundstrom, Pickles, etc.), artists had been critiquing the map from every conceivable perspective. In 1929, for example, Paul Éluard edited the world map to better conform to notions of Surrealist desire; in 1943 Joaquín Torres-García turned it upside down to make it better accord with South American points of view; in 1960 Jasper Johns slathered oil paint all over the map’s pretensions to accuracy and precision; in 1966 Claes Oldenburg blew the map off the page by stuffing it with kapok; in 1969 John Baldessari literalized map type by photographing on the ground the letters C, A, L, I F, O, R, N, I, and A where they appeared on a state map; in 1971 Alighiero Boetti embroidered the map’s servitude to the state in national flags, again and again. Artists attacked the map, mocked it, contested it, made fun of it, turned it into a joke, emptied it of meaning, erased it, distorted it, reconstructed it, and in the process revealed it for what it was, a human artifact – like a magazine advertisement for Cadillac or a billboard for Luck Strikes – albeit one with legal pretensions in the domain of borders (from national borders all the way down to those of private property).

By the time the 1980s rolled around map art was a rapidly growing phenomenon. One index to this was the ever-growing numbers of group shows devoted to map art and what follows is a catalogue of the 2010-2011 map art shows that have come to our attention (thanks to the sharp eyes of Lize Mogel and kanarinka especially). We’re certain there were more and beg you to note them in the comments. We’ll make certain to update the list.

During the period Nato Thompson’s Experimental Geography exhibition continued to travel, as did Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat’s Atlas of Radical Cartography; and the intense activity finally drew the attention of Artnews which devoted two pages in its October, 2010 issue to map art. The piece not only covered Experimental Geography and the Atlas of Radical Cartography, but drew attention to Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas. Solnit and Denis Wood appeared together at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with her Infinite City and his Everything Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas (with an introduction by Ira Glass). A casual survey of the data suggests that Joyce Kozloff remains the most widely exhibited map artist but, especially with the continued travelling of Experimental Geography and the Atlas of Radical Cartography, Lize Mogel and Trevor Paglen are giving her a run for the money (artists whose work is more varied would be hard to imagine).

It’s worth noting that 2010 was a banner year for map art atlases too. The publication of Everything Sings was posted here at Makingmaps.net, but Rebecca Solnit’s celebrated Infitinte City: A San Francisco Atlas also needs to be mentioned, along with another, wholly different, San Francisco-map art atlas, Tracing the Portola: A San Francisco Neighborhood Atlas from, Kate Connell and Oscar Melara. Both Tracing the Portola and Infinite City were also released as broadside posters.

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Mapping Spectral Spaces, Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies, Blacksburg (VA), 2010. “How have residual marks [including maps] been created, left, and remembered? How might we conceptualize these afterlives and effects of experiences, perceptions, processes, and events?” Curated by Deb Sim, the exhibition displayed the work of Chris Baeumler, Iain Biggs, Laurie Beth Clark, Gülgün Kayim, Rebecca Krinke, Mary Modeen, Mona Smith, Judith Tucker and Dane Webster. Download the 40-page, full-color catalogue at the web site.

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You Are Here: Mapping the Psychogeography of New York City, Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, 2010. This show, curated by You Are Here’s Katherine Harmon, wanted to “map the emotional terrain of the world’s most famous and influential urban center, New York City, and explore the effect of the city’s powerful moods on those who live and work here.” The show included Nicola Twilley’s Scratch ‘N Sniff NYC, Nina Katchadourian’s New York Soundtrack, Daniela Kostova and Olivia Robertson’s Anxiety Map, and Ingrid Burrington’s Loneliness Map, among others.

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Julie Mehretu: Grey Area, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010. “Asking what it means to be an American artist in Germany during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars of the Bush years, Mehretu’s canvases meditate on the idea of the modern ruin,” in “maplike networks” of lines evoking trade routes and shapes drawn from architectural plans, city plans, and aerial imagery. The show is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue.

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Mapping: Outside/Inside, Borowsky Gallery (Gershman Y), Philadelphia, 2010. “Four artists who use maps to bend our understanding of the outside world, including Leila Daw, Joyce Kozloff, Eve Andree Laramee, and Nikolas Schiller.” The show seems to have been curated by Schiller. No catalogue. MarieE posted shots of the show at the URL above.

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Creative Compass, Royal Geographical Society, London, 2010. Maps from the Society’s collection together with newly commissioned map art from Agnès Poitevin-Navarre and Susan Stockwell. It was accompanied by a 32-page illustrated color catalogue, with an essay by Dr Harriet Hawkins and artist interviews by Paul Goodwin. There’s a slide show at the URL above.

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Uneven Geographies, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 2010. “Uneven Geographies considers ways contemporary art responds to the politics of globalization through the work of fourteen artists and artist-collectives from twelve countries and five continents.” The artists are: Éduardo Abaroa, Azzellini & Ressler, Yto Barrada, Ursula Biemann, Bureau d’Études, Öyvind Fahlström, Goldin + Senneby, Mark Lombardi, Steve McQueen, Cildo Meireles, George Osodi, Bruno Serralongue, Mladen Stilinović, and Yang Zhenzhong.
The 62-page catalogue is available as a download at the URL above.

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Joyce Kozloff: Navigational Triangles, DC Moore, New York, 2010. “Long before Google Maps or GPS, seafarers used navigational triangles to pinpoint their location and to chart their course in relation to celestial bodies and the earth’s poles. This exhibition comprises paintings and mixed media works that expand upon this concept and continue the artist’s longstanding engagement with cross-cultural issues.” The show also included pieces from Kozloff’s newest series, China Is Near (Charta, Milan, 2010, with an essay by Barbara Pollack).

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Mapworks: the Map as Art, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol (CA), 2010. Juried by Kim Anno the show included work from Michael Acker, Brian Andrews, Marla Brill, Stephanie Hamilton, Lee Millard, Michele Morehouse, Tofu S, Kathleen Yorba and others. No catalogue.

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We Don’t Record Flowers, Said the Cartographer, Bétonsalon, Paris, 2010-2011. Put together by bo-ring (Virginie Bobin and Julia Kläring), the show “takes roots in the appropriation – under various forms and for various reasons – of the desert and its images in modern and postmodern political and cultural history,” that desert, which is “whiteness ‘without qualities’ – or so it is fantasized – and is best captured with maps or planar representations. It is thus an ideal space for projection, inscription, and the forward planning of political fantasies, architectural utopias, scientific expeditions, and some of fiction’s founding narratives.” It included the work of Lara Almarcegui, Louidgi Beltrame, Ursula Biemann, Julien Blanpied, Wang Bing, Tacita Dean, Ellie Ga, Michael Höpfner, Ruth Kaaserer, Yves Mettler, Trevor Paglen, Carson Salter, le Silo, Triple Canopy et José León Cerrillo, and was accompanied by a full slate of programs. There’s plenty more at the URL above,  where you can follow the links to a catalogue site where you can assemble your own catalogue of well over a hundred pages.

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Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah (NY), 2010-2011. “In an era of global culture, artists are increasingly exploring maps as both image and cipher. Mapping: Memory and Motion in Contemporary Art features paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, a sound installation, and a live web terminal to address such themes as borders and boundaries, identity and colonialism, journeys – both real and imagined, memory and nostalgia, and tourism and travel.” Curated by Sarah Yanguy, the show included the work of 38 artists and was accompanied by a lovely, 52-page, full-color catalogue. You can download a teacher’s pre-visit pack at the URL above.

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Apamar. Charts, metrics and politics of space, Centre d’Arts Contemporàbies, Barcelona, 2010-2011. “The projects intersect through proposing alternatives to the representation of space, its interpretation and how to live in it,” and “In this sense, Beirut: Mapping Security by Mona Fawaz, Ahmad Gharbieh and Mona Harb, depicts the numerous types of security measures that have been established in municipal Beirut as a result of the armed conflicts the country has witnessed since the 70s. Sara Nelson Wright’s visual mapping of six individuals’ travels in Brooklyn, Locations and Dislocation, is a reflection on the effects of gentrification and urban expansion. In LRPT (La región de los pantalones tranfronterizos), the Tijuana-based collective Torolab makes visible the transnational mobility of the inhabitants of the twin cities of Tijuana and San Diego. Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campo visit Places that do not exist, and provide us with an account of the reality of these places that have disappeared from Google earth for being protected areas. Geografie dell’Oltrecittà and Agroculture nomadi of Stalker/Primavera Romana are common design projects that generate and share social knowledge and awareness on urban changes, while Guifi.net in Catalunya, Mapeo Colectivo from Iconoclasistas in Buenos Aires, and Mapping the Commons, Athens by Hackitectura.net all spur us into participation with the aim of creating common resources.” The extraordinary show was curated by Maral Mikirditsian, Ramon Parramon and Laia Sole. There’s more at the URL above.

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Raw: Geographies, Reed College Campus, Portland, 2011. “Seeking to transform our physical, social, and individual landscapes, RAW: GEOGRAPHIES explores and reconstructs our experience of space. Entering into the emerging discourse of experimental geographers, radical cartographers, old-school land artists, unruly activists, and stodgy theorists, it resides in the interdisciplinary space of psychogeography, spatial practice, environmentalism, and architecture. A heterogeneous mix of elements that shift pre-inscribed boundaries, RAW: GEOGRAPHIES will suspend the everyday in a space for potentiality and play.” The event showcased the work of Francis Alÿs, Lize Mogel, Melvin Edwards Nelson, Jacinda Russell & Nancy Douthey, Kathy Westwater, Gary Wiseman & Gabe Flores, and Ben Wolf.

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Mapping Joy and Pain, an ongoing project, mostly U.S. (Twin Cities, MN), 2010-2011. Rebecca Krinke’s public map art project consists of a large laser-cut map of Minneapolis and St. Paul (and elsewhere) on which people are encouraged to locate their personal places of joy and pain. Not quite the Atlas of Love and Hate Bill Bunge had in mind, it’s a serious step in that direction. The map or its analogues have been widely displayed (for example, see Mapping Spectral Spaces above), but the home office, with numerous videos, downloadable pdfs, and so on, is at the URL above.

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Mappamundi, an exhibition about maps and contemporary art, Berardo Museum-Foundation, Lisbon, 2011. Another extraordinary show! Curated by Guillaume Monsaingeon, the exhibition assembled an international group of artists who, over the past 40 years, have worked on maps and who have questioned cartographical representation. included the work of Noriko Ambe, Lars Arrhenius, Neal Beggs, Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Chust Peters, De Geuzen, Angela Detanico & Rafael Lain, Paola Di Beloo, Peter Fend, Jochen Gerner, Luigi Ghirri, Marco Godinho, Anawana Halba, Hong Hao, Nina Katchadourian, Chris Kenny, John Klima, Joseph Kosuth, Guillermo Kuitca, Nelson Leirner, Cristina Lucas, Mateo Mate, Satomi Matoba, Paco Mesa & Lola Marazuela, Matt Mullican, Rivane Neuenschwander, Miguel Palma, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Kathy Prendergast, Qin Ga, David Renaud, Rosana Ricalde, Susan Stockwell, Jeanne Terwen-de-Loos, Caterina Vaneetvelde, Adriana Varejao, Jessica Vaturi, Robert Walden, Jeremy Wood. See the slides at Jeremy Wood’s GPS Drawing website (above). The museum’s website is here.

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Mapping, Carroll Square Gallery, Washington, DC, 2011. The show featured the work of Carol Barton, Dahlia Elsayed, Joyce Kozloff, Siobhan Rigg, Juan Tejedor, and Renee van der Stelt.

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Lauren Rosenthal, Hand-Cut Paper, The Monmouth Museum (NJ), 2011. Rosenthal uses maps – here hand-cut paper maps of rivers and river basins – to reorient people’s thinking about rivers and our interconnectedness. Rosenthal’s river blog is here.

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The Art of Mapping, TAG Fine Arts, London, 2011. The show “celebrates cartography’s potential as an art form, rather than a science,” and included the work of Neal Beggs, Claire Brewster, Christa Dichgans, Stanley Donwood, Peter Dykhuis, Dahlia Elsayed, Rob Good, Gonkar Gyatso, Emma Johnson, Jonathan Parsons, Simon Patterson, Nigel Peake, Grayson Perry, Rob Ryan, Paula Scher, Justine Smith, Susan Stockwell, Robert Walden, Stephen Walter, Heidi Whitman, Jeremy Wood, and Cai Yuan. A color catalogue accompanied the exhibition which can be downloaded here.

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Global Cities, Model Worlds, Pittsburgh Biennial, Pittsburgh, 2011. Co-organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art, Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PF/PCA), and The Andy Warhol Museum; and organized by Astria Suparak; the exhibition featured the work of Justseeds, Lize Mogel, Sarah Ross & Ryan Griffis, subRose, Temporary Services, and Transformazium.

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Mind the Map! Barents Spektakel, Kirkenes, Norway, 2011. “The Arctic map is changing – creating new stories, opportunities and challenges. The Arctic map is being redrawn today. Who controls the Arctic seabed? More and more stakeholders ‘update’ their claims for the Arctic pie.” Involving commissioned music, writers, and others, the Speektakel’s Pikene på Broen invited three artists to comment on these issues: Morten Traavik (Norway), Olga Kisseleva (Russia), and Stefano Cagol (Italy).

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Mapping the Surface, Central Booking, New York, 2011-2012. “Cartographers can tell us more than just the routes from one point to another, they can map terrains of landscape or psychological space, that amorphous state that adds up to a sense of a place beyond mere cataloging. They can also reduce all to the basic, the pure essence of line and plane. These artists in the next exhibition at CENTRAL BOOKING take us along such a road and beyond”: Doug Beube, Jeff Woodbury, Christina Mitrentse, Heidi Neilson, Robin Price, Cindy Kane, Dannielle Tegeder, Haptic Lab, Paula Scher, Alastair Noble Lilla LoCurto & Bill Outcault, Sabra Booth, Public Laboratory, Smudge Studio (Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth), Robbin Ami Silverberg, Barbara Siegel, and Elena Costelian. A catalog of Mapping the Surface is available as part of the November issue of CENTRAL BOOKING Magazine, at the URL above.

When Bill Bunge mapped out the locations of car/pedestrian collisions in Detroit (Detroit Geographical Expedition, 1968) he and the map were advocating a way of thinking about what was happening to the black community in Detroit – and advocating for change.

All maps advocate.

To advocate means to “to speak or write in favor of; support or urge by argument; recommend publicly.” The word derives from the Latin advocate: “to call to one’s aid.”

What map does not advocate, or argue for something? We are always calling maps to our aid.

Three free books on maps and advocacy have been made available for download recently, and are worth a look.

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Two New PDF Books [added June 6 2009]:

Good Practices in Participatory Mapping (2mb PDF here, 2009). Published by International Fund for Agricultural Development.

A review of participatory mapping methods.

This report will review existing knowledge related to participatory mapping and recent developments. Specifically:

• Section 1 will define the main features of participatory mapping;
• Section 2 will discuss key applications of participatory mapping;
• Section 3 will present specific tools used in participatory mapping, including their strengths and weaknesses;
• Section 4 will identify good practices and explore the significance of process in participatory mapping initiatives.

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Toolbox & Manual: Mapping the Vulnerability of Communities (4.4mb PDF English version here, Portuguese version aqui, 2008). Published by Salzburg University Centre for Geoinformatics.

A overview of concepts and methods for community mapping, focused on vulnerability.

Within the research and project context it is aimed to provide the local communities with appropriate maps of their communities. The maps should enhance planning and decision making processes within the communities in regard to reduce local vulnerabilities and allow appropriate planning of disaster response measures. It is the first time in Mozambique that maps have been produced with such an accuracy (high resolution data) and for disaster risk management through the integration of participatory practices.

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Visualizing Information for Advocacy: an Introduction to Information Design (7mb PDF here, January 2008). Published by Tactical Technology Collective.

Succinct, well-designed, with many good examples of maps and information graphics for advocacy.

…a manual aimed at helping NGOs and advocates strengthen their campaigns and projects through communicating vital information with greater impact. This project aims to raise awareness, introduce concepts, and promote good practice in information design – a powerful tool for advocacy, outreach, research, organization and education.

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Maps for Advocacy: An Introduction to Geographic Mapping Techniques (3mb PDF here, September 2008). Published by Tactical Technology Collective.

A great overview of maps and advocacy with many examples and resources.

The booklet is an effective guide to using maps in advocacy. The mapping process for advocacy is explained vividly through case studies, descriptions of procedures and methods, a review of data sources as well as a glossary of mapping terminology. Scattered through the booklet are links to websites which afford a glance at a few prolific mapping efforts.

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Field Guide for Humanitarian Mapping (3.2mb PDF here, March 2009). Published by MapAction.

A textbook for using maps and GIS in humanitarian work.  The Guide provides detailed information on data collection (GPS) and the use of Google Earth and MapWindow (free mapping software).

The guide was written to meet the need for practical, step-by-step advice for aid workers who wish to use free and open-source resources to produce maps both at field and headquarters levels. The first edition contains an introduction to the topic of GIS, followed by chapters focused on the use of two recommended free software tools: Google Earth, and MapWindow. However much of the guidance is also relevant for users of other software.

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Some related resources:

• the Tutor/Mentor Collection’s GIS and Mapping Resources Page.
• slides & text from Erik Hersman’s Activist Mapping presentation at Where 2.0.
• the Atlas of Radical Cartography.
• Counter-Cartographies Collective & 3C’s Blog.
• An Introduction to Critical Cartography (176k PDF) by Jeremy Crampton & John Krygier (2006)
  
• “Protest Maps” (292k PDF) by Denis Wood & John Krygier (2009).
• Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography & GIS by Jeremy Crampton (2009).

Making maps is rife with rules. But following rules does not necessarily produce a great (or even good) map. It may be the implementation of broader design principles that leads to a successful map.

Principles are an intellectual generalization of a broad field of knowledge: a kind of map, in the broadest sense of the word.

They are useful for guiding map makers and helping map users understand how maps work.

There are numerous sets of cartographic design principles. My previous post on Edward Tufte distilled six map design principles (or commandments as I called them) from Tufte’s first book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

In 1999 the British Cartographic Society’s Design Group proposed “Five Principles of Cartographic Design.” When I first came across this set of principles I thought them interesting – even a bit passionate – a rare state of affairs in the often stoic world of cartography. I added a few maps and my own comments (in italics).

More on these map design principles below: Concept before Compilation, Hierarchy with Harmony, Simplicity from Sacrifice, Maximum Information at Minimum Cost, and Engage the Emotion to Engage the Mind.

Cool maps below include: Geo-Smiley Terror Spree Map, The Continents and Islands of Mankind, Hate Groups and Hate Crimes Map, and Where Commuters Run Over Black Children, Detroit 1968.

Five Principles of Map Design

Concept before Compilation
Without a grasp of concept, the whole of the design process is negated. The parts embarrass the whole. Once concept is understood, no design or content feature will be included which does not fit it. Design the whole before the part. Design comes in two stages, concept and parameters, and detail in execution. Design once, devise, design again. User first, user last. What does the user want from this map? What can the user get from this map? Is that what they want? If a map were a building, it shouldn’t fall over.

…or, why are you making your map, who is the audience, and what do they want from the map?

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Hierarchy with Harmony
Important things must look important, and the most important thing should look the most important. “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Lesser things have their place and should serve to complement the important. From the whole to the part, and all the parts, contributing to the whole. Associated items must have associated treatment. Harmony is to do with the whole map being happy with itself. Successful harmony leads to repose. Perfect harmony of elements leads to a neutral bloom. Harmony is subliminal.

…or, what’s important? Make it visually jump out. What’s less important, but necessary in a supporting role? Make it fall back…

(Geo-Smiley Terror Spree Map. Reproduced from Making Maps, p. 144)

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Simplicity from Sacrifice
Great design tends towards simplicity (Bertin). Its not what you put in that makes a great map but what you take out. The map design stage is complete when you can take nothing else out. Running the film of an explosion backwards, all possibilities rush to one point. They become the right point. This is the designer’s skill. Content may determine scale or scale may determine content, and each determines the level of generalization (sacrifice).

…or, less is more…

(Redrawn from William Bunge, The Continents and Islands of Mankind. Areas in black have more than 30 people per square mile. Reproduced from Making Maps, p. 160-161)

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Maximum Information at Minimum Cost (after Ziff)
How much information can be gained from this map, at a glance. Functionality not utility. Design makes utility functional. All designs are a compromise, just as a new born baby is a compromise between its father and mother. The spark which makes a map special often only comes when the map is complete.

…or, carefully select the content and marks on the map (symbols) to maximize the map’s information content and communication capabilities…

(Hate Groups and Hate Crimes Map. Apparently more hate groups in a state means fewer hate crimes. Reproduced from Making Maps, p. 208)

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Engage the Emotion to Engage the Understanding
Design with emotion to engage the emotion. Only by feeling what the user feels can we see what the user sees. Good designers use Cartographic fictions, Cartographic impressions, Cartographic illusions to make a map. All of these have emotive contents. The image is the message. Good design is a result of the tension between the environment (the facts) and the designer. Only when the reader engages the emotion, the desire, will they be receptive to the map’s message. Design uses aesthetics but the principles of aesthetics are not those of design. We are not just prettying maps up. The philosophy is simple, beauty (aesthetics) focuses the attention. Focusing the attention is the purpose of map design!

…or, embed a bit of passion…

(Where Commuters Run Over Black Children, Detroit 1968. Detroit Geographical Expedition. The title says it all.)

Denis Wood, co-author of Making Maps, has been working on an atlas of the Boylan Heights neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina since the mid 1970s. The atlas, which has never been published in its entirety, is called Dancing and Singing: A Narrative Atlas of Boylan Heights.

Inspired by Bill Bunge’s radical cartography in the 1960s and 1970s, the atlas contains diverse examples of creative, place-inspired maps, including maps of night, crime, fences, graffiti, textures, autumn leaves, routes, the underground, lines overhead, stars, and jack-o-lanterns. The atlas is of particular interest to those engaged in planning, urban history, urban geography, landscape architecture, participatory mapping and GIS, subversive cartography, counter-mapping, and psychogeography. Or anyone who enjoys creative mapping.

Sign Map (736kb PDF here)

The Atlas has been featured on NPR’s This American Life and in Katharine Harmon’s book You Are Here. All or or parts of the atlas have been shown at The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, Vermont (1989), the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York (2001), at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles (2002), at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire (2002), at designbox in Raleigh, North Carolina (2004), and Publico Galleries in Cincinnatti, Ohio (2007). The image which opens this entry was taken at the Publico Gallery.

A description of the atlas by Denis and more of it’s maps follow.

I began the atlas in 1975 when I started teaching landscape architecture studios. I knew nothing about landscape architecture but I was a geographer. I thought I might help my students learn something about how to read the landscape by focusing hard on a small piece of it.

For a lot of reasons I picked the neighborhood I lived in. One of the things my students and I ended up doing was mapping a lot of its less obvious aspects. Out of this work, and the example of the radical geographer, Bill Bunge, and his mapping of the neighborhoods of Detroit, came the idea of making an atlas of Boylan Heights.

I pursued the idea off and on more or less seriously with different groups of students through the early 1980s. Then, in a series of studios and seminars, a handful of students joined me in a major effort to get something done.

There was a lot we wanted to do. Certainly we wanted to use the mapping to help us figure out what a neighborhood was, but we also wanted to use the mapping as a kind of organizational tool, as a way of bringing the neighborhood together and helping it to see itself. This meant we wanted to be able to get copies of the atlas into the hands of the residents and so we planned a black and white atlas that could be cheaply reproduced on a copy machine. At the same time we wanted to make something beautiful, almost a livre d’artiste. I in particular was impatient with distinctions between art and science – it was an important part of my teaching that these distinctions were arbitrary and obfuscatory – and I wanted the atlas to read almost like a novel.

One outcome of this was a paper I presented at the Schools Atlas Conference in Calgary in 1986, “Pleasure In the Idea: The Atlas As Narrative Form” (9.2mb PDF here.) (Cartographica, 24(1), Spring, 1987, pp. 24-45). Here I wrote about the narrative structure of atlases, and advocated making explicit what is usually implicit.

Sadly enough this paper may have been the only material outcome of the atlas project. Our energy flagged (or it was diverted) and the project ended up in boxes (lots of boxes) shoved under a table. Little work has been done on the project during the past fifteen years.

I think these boxes would still be under the table were it not for Ira Glass and This American Life. It was 1998. Ira wanted to do a show about maps. Ira’s producer learned about me from my cartographic rant, The Power of Maps (Guilford 1992). I was to give the show background and history. Ira must have assumed I also made maps, because after a long interview about the ground covered in my book, he asked about the maps I made.

I don’t make maps. I certainly never thought about myself as a mapmaker. Except for little sketch maps to give people directions, these maps of Boylan Heights are about the only maps I’ve done. When Ira asked about my mapmaking, it was these that came to mind. Ira so loved what I was saying that a second interview unfolded from the first, and that was the stuff he used for the show.

This American Life has a website and the show’s producer wanted maps to put on it. I’m not kidding when I say the maps were in boxes under a table, in a bunch of boxes under a table, this stuff jumbled up there, that here. Any remnant order had been destroyed when I’d moved my office. The show proved popular and has been replayed often during the past ten years.

Jack-o-lantern Map (2.8mb PDF here)

The atlas was going to be three sections, corresponding to what we’d decided neighborhoods did. This was to transform universal stuff – things in general – into particular things, into the ding an sich. And vice versa.

For openers a section concerned with stars and sunlight, rock and water, leaf and tree … in general. Except for the map of pumpkins, the maps we completed are from this section.

Street Light Map (2.6mb PDF here)

For closers a section concerned with the same things but … as they uniquely manifest themselves in their individuality, which is where the pumpkins would have been. In this section we’d concern ourselves with this shadow cast by this streetlight on this sidewalk at this moment. One night we walked the neighborhood with a light meter – it took hours – recording tiny incremental changes in light levels. From this we drafted (but never finished) a map of the light at night (different from the streetlight map which is no more than a map of the locations of the streetlights). As part of the spread we’d planned a very detailed rendering of a single block face. The background would consist of a photographic image of individual shadows on an individual sidewalk. It would be like … zooming in on the pattern.

In between these general and particular sections came the transformer section. At issue here was how Boylan Heights transformed a citizen of Raleigh (someone who could vote in its elections) into a unique individual (who had brown hair and green eyes and so on) and who lived here (at this unique address); precisely as the neighborhood transformed this individual, by dint of living at that address in Boylan Heights, into a citizen of Raleigh (just one of many). This section would have had a strongly processual, indeed historical character.

Among other things, we’d compiled a record of every property transaction from the subdivision of the original plantation grant to the present (this in the late 1970s (it would have to be updated (which at this point would not be easy (but extremely interesting)))).

We envisioned 64 double-page spreads, close to a hundred maps altogether, maybe more. In addition to those here, and more or less at random: sounds (walking the neighborhood with a sound meter, et cetera), mentions in the neighborhood newsletter, crime, fences, sidewalk graffiti, viewsheds (what of the rest of the city can be seen from any location in Boylan Heights), housetypes, yard furniture, landscaping, property values, property ownership, trees by category and species (many maps), the embeddedness of the neighborhood in other zones and districts (police precinct, school attendance zones, voting precincts, et cetera), time-space maps (of the paperboy’s route, the mailman’s route, city bus routes, et cetera), magazine subscriptions (we’d done an elaborate door-to-door survey in 1976, some of which we replicated in 1982 (it’s time to do it again)), weather, the color of the leaves in the fall …

There were going to be a lot of historical maps.

I’d mounted an insolometer on my roof to measure incoming solar radiation.

No wonder we ran out of energy!!

Let me describe some of the maps in a little more detail.

Light at Night Map: As I mentioned, we walked the neighborhood one long night with a light meter, noting our readings on a large scale map of the neighborhood we’d cut into smaller sheets. We never got around to reducing the data to the smaller scale the atlas would require, but I did make the light contour map for the 300 block of Cutler Street, and have blown up the photo for the background. It would be – could be – a neat spread.

Crime Map: We copied off the police blotter for the six months July to December 1981, and using the cops’ codes worked them into a map. The size of the number denotes the frequency at that location of that type of call. A 17 is a motor vehicle accident. A 16 is a vehicle blocking the flow of traffic. As you’ll see on the map of street signs, there are a lot at one intersection. No surprise that this is also the corner where there were lots of problems with cars (at the time, U.S. 64 and 70 turned 90º here).

From our perspective the maps of crime, street signs, and traffic were about the world … passing through the neighborhood.

Fences Map: Originally students designed their own map pages. Helen Waldrop drafted the map of the neighborhood’s fences which we’d have reworked for the atlas.

Sidewalk Graffiti Map: Susan Edwards drafted the map of sidewalk graffiti, all of which had been made in wet concrete. Naturally we made rubbings of all of them.

Lines Overhead Map (484kb PDF here)

Lines Overhead Map: Shaub Dunkley, our tree man, made the first attempts at this. What to show? There are as many things going on overhead as underground: electric, telephone, cable. How to get the data? The utilities map this stuff all the time, but the maps are proprietary. Finally Carter Crawford, a student, and I just went out and mapped the whole neighborhood. I’ve got this raw data. Also a couple of sheets of corrections following further field work. Still, what to show? And how? A graduated circle map might have made the relative density of connections most clear, but it wouldn’t have … gotten to the wires. Stubbed wires … Then the magical diagram which, while perhaps harder to interpret quantitatively, actually makes it most clear … what’s overhead.

Textures Map: For our Textures map we rubbed lots of “regular” sidewalk, house siding, tree bark, and all the manhole covers et cetera (some of which, radically reduced, appear in the text as breaksigns). The map itself is hard to visualize.

Stars Map (4.1mb PDF here)

Stars Map: I knew I wanted to situate Boylan Heights in everything, that is, in the universe, but it wasn’t simple to figure out how to pull this off. When it came to us to map the stars as they spread themselves over the neighborhood we knew it was right – the stars in the neighborhood – but it sounds easier to do than it was. Armed with a magnetic compass we lay down in the middle of the intersection of Boylan Avenue and Dupont Circle and looked up at the sky. We did a rough sketch of the horizon – fumbling flashlights – and the stars. A couple of days later we lay down in the intersection in the middle of the afternoon to get the horizon in finer detail. What we were trying to do was a kind of fish-eye view, splashing up out of the neighborhood into the night sky. Using an atlas of star positions we improved our plotting of the night sky. This was not easy either because the projection we were making and the projection the star atlas used were very different. We pulled the rest of the stars from Galileo’s Sidereus Nuncius both because they are so beautiful and because I liked the way Galileo integrated text and image. Crawford did the drawing, laid out the spread, and did the photomechanical work.

Mentions in the Newsletter Map: Our big discovery here was how important the address was. It didn’t matter who lived at the most frequently mentioned address. Whoever it was, was always most frequently mentioned. This took us into the social geography of the neighborhood, and how it maintained the social structure built into the neighborhood by its original planners (which was reflected by the distribution of pumpkins at Halloween and everything else).

Car Space Map (1.6mb PDF here)

Autumn Leaves Map: We simply walked the neighborhood annotating the leaf color on a sheet of trace layered over one of Shaub Dunkley’s maps of the trees in Boylan Heights. Shaub was the tree man on our team. How to display this? I transformed the color image into color names and began laying these down on the compositor. Then I thought, maybe use the word “leaves” and vary the typeface to indicate the color. I’d have gone with the color names. It would have made a gorgeous map and piece of concrete poetry. A compositor was a special IBM typewriter you could “set type” on. I should say that we had no computers. Boy, that’s a revolution that’s come through fast! I did all the autumn leaves stuff.

Routes, Time-space Maps: We did a lot of work on this, but finished none of it. One was a map of a paper route, with a black dot representing one newspaper passing through the neighborhood. It started with Scott Lameroux’s route. Scott delivered bundles of Raleigh Times to paperboys. (The Times is no longer published. How time flies!) Scott ran through the neighborhood to drop a bundle of papers in front of Lester Mim’s house (where the black dots begin to rise vertically). Scott left the neighborhood with no black dots because he’d left the paper we’re following. The papers sat there. Since the bundle wasn’t moving in space but only enduring in time, the dots simply rise up the page (in the temporal dimension) until Lester picked the bundle up. Lester was the paperboy. His paper route snaked through the neighborhood, and the black dot moved with Lester until he delivered the paper we’re tracking to Oot’s house on Dorothea Drive. The black dot representing the newspaper simply rises here, because it doesn’t leave the house. Lester went on to finish his route and return home. When Oot’s family finished with the paper they threw it out. The paper rises off the Day 1 page onto the bottom of the Day 2 page sitting in the garbage can (today this would be the appropriate recycling bin, another dramatic change). The entire snake on Day 2 is that of garbage truck #1135, Larry Mitchell’s. When Mitchell’s truck picked up the paper the black dot joined the truck’s route. Tim Hess complied the base map. Diane Pacella complied Lester’s route. I complied the other routes and drew the diagram.

Another map shows the buses passing through the neighborhood between 3:00 and 3:20 any weekday afternoon, time rising vertically again. Included here would be a map showing the same routes with the time collapsed out of them lying flat on the page.

Triangle Correctional Center (since closed) ran a bus of working prisoners through the neighborhood back to the prison. Capital Area Transit ran the old Boylan Heights route (since abandoned). Others would be school bus routes, two from one elementary school, one from a 6th grade center (since absorbed into a middle school), and one from a junior high (since turned into a middle school).
We also made maps of the other CAT bus routes, and a map of the mailman’s route.

Underground Map (1.7mb PDF here)

Underground Map: Did we struggle to understand and represent the gas, water, and sewer systems! Dawn Davis and Tim Hess went down to the city and the gas company. They came back with the raw data, long linear maps of the streets and alleys. Tim then drafted many versions. Carter Crawford built on Tim’s work in his effort to combine all the data into a single image. It took him a lot of drafts. Most of the trials vanished into the wastebasket. I used the final image in The Power of Maps (p. 19), to make a point about the social construction of maps. It’s the most widely reproduced of the maps.

Boylan’s Hill Map: The problem with Boylan’s Hill was to get as much information as we could into the spread and still maintain some semblance of elegance. At the very least we wanted a contour image, but to make plainer what this means, a profile as well. Since the spread was in the general section, we also wanted to show something of the topography of the area surrounding Boylan’s Hill. We made a lot of stabs at this. We thought of making a model and photographing that, but Tanaka’s method for representing landform relief proved more than adequate. Jimmy Thiem did all the spade work for this spread, but the final work is Crawford’s.

All maps copyleft Denis Wood (2008).