Cartography at Ground Level:

Abstract

To explore the shifting status of the street in contemporary mapping culture, this chapter attends to two map-based walking performances by US-born artist Jeremy Wood, who uses Global Positioning Systems to transform grounded mobility into a means of cartographic inscription. Whereas Michel de Certeau describes cartography as an elevated visuality, regimenting urban practice from above, my argument stresses how Wood's mappings conflate lived mobility and synoptic cartography. Extending mapping to the street, his practice exemplifies digital mapping's expansion beyond institutional domains. To close, however, I show how Wood's art also exposes slippages and pretentions of existential security in digital mapping's worldview of securely calculated locations, which are recast as ghostly projections in a universe without essential orientation.

“That is why users do not understand the maps we make for them”: Cartographic gaps between experts and domestic workers and the Right to the City

“…Some experts have erroneously conveyed maps as objective and transparent. Institutional mapping presupposes the world can be measured through exact and objective procedures (Ferdinand, 2018:139). However, maps often contain errors; people with individual positionalities and epistemologies, who undergo interrelated processes and negotiations, create them (Elwood, 2009; Kennedy et al, 2016; Pavlovskaya, 2018; Vaughan, 2018).…”

“…Maps from above, like “God’s eye,” contrast with maps from the ground, those experienced through one’s body. The panoptic visualization of watching over the city takes distance and makes it readable from above (Ferdinand, 2018). “God’s eye” maps separate the experts who create them and users who read them from the streets that manifest complex situated practices, allowing them to grasp the urban geographies without grabbing them (Ferdinand, 2018:145).…”

“…The panoptic visualization of watching over the city takes distance and makes it readable from above (Ferdinand, 2018). “God’s eye” maps separate the experts who create them and users who read them from the streets that manifest complex situated practices, allowing them to grasp the urban geographies without grabbing them (Ferdinand, 2018:145). Aerial views reduce urban environments to transparent texts, promoting rational interventions from afar (Ferdinand, 2018:145).…”

“…“God’s eye” maps separate the experts who create them and users who read them from the streets that manifest complex situated practices, allowing them to grasp the urban geographies without grabbing them (Ferdinand, 2018:145). Aerial views reduce urban environments to transparent texts, promoting rational interventions from afar (Ferdinand, 2018:145). The idea of maps’ objectivity precisely comes from this exercise of taking distance.…”

“…Recently, scholars have argued that disseminating digital cartography has democratized this epistemology, engaging many non-traditional experts in map creation (Crampton, 2010; Della Dora, 2012). Other authors contend that this supposed democratization of cartographic practices adds these non-experts to conventional cartographic knowledge (Ferdinand, 2018:149). Hence, we should inquire who has the knowledge and resources to access open digital data, especially in places with low digital literacy, who can create visual roadmaps to inhabit cities.…”