Mapping Our Worlds
http://mappingourworlds.wordpress.com/
http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0316a9692a
Abstract
Mapping our Worlds is an interactive online exhibit exploring new ways of mapping material experiences. The map seems to have become an objectification of our material experiences, a way to represent the materiality of our everyday experiences, emotions, responses and ideas. However, as Theo van Leeuwan argues, this is, perhaps, how mapping began (88). Thus, perhaps we are using digital tools to revert back to mapping social actions, as we continue to map our activities (eg: Foursquare), our ideas (eg: Twitter) and even ourselves (eg: Human Genome Project). New mapping technologies have allowed us to share our material experiences, by showing how we see, smell, taste and feel a location. Drawing on theories of materiality, this project is presented as an interaction between an image (one could say a mapping of maps), and a database, offering examples of early maps that represent the material, then a selection of maps representing the ‘immaterial’, and concludes with the different ways in which we use digital maps to represent our material experiences.