Dietz_Mapping the Homunculus_2006.pdf - iSites

Else/Where
Mapping
Steve Dietz 200
Mapping the Homunculus
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MAPPING THE
HOMUNCULUS
One of the most common ways to place
ourselves in relation to the incomprehensibly
vast, be it God or The Matrix, is by
creating a map . In an age of information
overload, the map has become a favorite
interface to data sets of all types,
geographic and otherwise. More importantly,
the map can become a kind of visual bridge
between disparate facts - zip codes and
cereal preferences, for instance. As loca ­
tion -aware devices proliferate - from cell
phones to any object with a radio frequency
10 tag-maps will become an increasingly
important means to theorize and discover
relationships that are not easily graspable .
Several artists' projects model how maps
might help not only locate us, but how
mapmaking can be a tool to build a counterimage
of our future urbanity-in contrast
to contemporary culture ' s panoptic, datamining
gaze onto our zip-coded profiles. I
shall argue that the image of the homunculus-
a diminutive human character who serves
as a kind of sensory index - is a useful
concept in two respects: it embodies the
idea that what we experience physically or
personally has a disproportionate effect
on our mental maps of the world, and that
simple rules can give rise to complex - even
intelligent - systems .
fiT VE:
DIETZ
Neurologist Wilder Penfield used the term
"homunculus" in his famous early brain maps,
which showed that each part of the body
is represented on two strips of the brain' s
cerebral cortex, the somatosensory cortex
(which receives sensations of touch) and the
motor cortex (which receives control movements).
Fingers, mout h and other sensitive
areas take up most space on both maps, a
point he exaggerated on another drawing of
a homunculus with sensitive body parts exaggerated
. If we extend this notion to mapping gazeUeer H 10 - 11/13 pp.196- 197
............_........................................._..............................._.............................__................_..............................................................--
1. Guy Debord, "Theory of the Deriye." Inlema/ionale Si/ua/lOnfl;ste 112
(December 1958) translated by Ken Knabb. < hUp://www2.cddc.vt.edu/
situationiSVsVl heory.html>
T
~ RK BY
'.1 EDIA
OG RAPH I
our direct experience of the lived eelV1ron,
ment, it will create a very different
from a conventional street plan.
In his Theory of the Derive, Guy Debord
quotes the sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart
de Lauwe: "an urban neighborhood is deter.
mined not only by geographical and eco n~
factors, but also by the image that its
inhabitants and those of other neighbor_
hoods have of it."'
De Lauwe included in one text a map of all
the movements made during one year by a
student living in the 16th Arrondissement of
Paris . Her itinerary forms a small triangle
with no significant deviations, the three
apexes of which are the School of Political
SCiences, her residence and that of her
piano teacher- illustrating, according to
Chombart de Lauwe, "the narrowness of the
real Paris in which each individual lives.
and which, according to Debord, ought to
provoke "outrage at the fact that anyone' s
life can be so pathetically limited."
2. Regarding complexily and emergent systems. see Steven Johnson.
Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brams, Cities, and Software;
Mitchel Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Etploratlons in
Massively Parallel M icrowOflds, 1997: and Albert·li!szI6 Barabiisi. Linked:
The New Science of Networks. 2002.
~eerH 2-3'13 pp. 188- 189
Mapping
MapPing the Homunculus
probably many of us can relate to a dominat ­
ing triangle of home, work and hobby ­
regardless of its parochial nature-but .
metaphorically speaking, de Lauwe ' s mapp1ng
of the student ' s movements in Paris is her
geographic homunculus. A contemporary
version of Chombart de Lauwe ' s project is
the Wa ag Society'S Amsterdam RealTime
proj ect. The issue with such homuncular maps
is that individually they don't create a
rich image of the who l e city. However, with
new understanding of complexity and emergent
sys tems , it is possible to imagine that
when t hese simp l e views are combined , the
sum may be greater than the parts. 2
Homuncular maps, deeply rooted in the
pe rsonal, can give rise to very powerful and
useful maps of more complex systems such as
cities . It is possible to imagine societal
systems that rely on individual input to
generate emergent and dynamically adaptive
solutions independent of a pre-existing
structure, single leader or top-down
process . It may be stating the obvious, but
one of the reasons to focus on maps is that
they matter. They make a difference in society'
s somatosensory cortex as profound and
direct as touch has on our own.
Steve Dietz 201
s ize of landmasses nearer the polespri
marily Europe and North America .'
2/6
In contrast , the Peters project i on accu ­
rately portrays the size of all nations,
and , according to its creator, gives a voice
t o underrepresented countries i n the devel ­
oping world. This would seem an important
issue, especially given the research by
Thomas Saarinen, who gathered over 3,800
sketch maps of the world by children from 49
countries for the project Children's Mental
Maps of the World. A composite of the
results by children from Thailand looks most
like the Mercator projection, which greatly
exaggerates areas where the children don't
live. Theirs is the opposite of a homuncular
view of the world.·
The Peters projection is significant not
only for the interface it provides, but
for its highlighting of the fact that the
Mercator projection is only one option among
worldviews, not the natural way to map the
world, no matter how logical or effiCient.
Homuncular projects are important not only
for their viewpoint, but for how they de ­
naturalize the dominant interfaces we swim
i n, whether the interface is Sky News or
America Online or MapQuest, More powerful
than the meanings of the visualized data is
how that very act of visualization disrupts
systems of knowledge and relationships of
power. As the geographer Denis Wood frames
it, "maps work by serving interests."5
The following projects serve the interests
of individuals and local communities while
still attempting a holistiC functionality;
they disrupt business as usual in terms of
who and what is representedj and many of
them provide alternative interfaces that
viscerally connote the possibility of alternative
viewpoints and multiple worldviews.
MINNEAPOLIS ANO ST. PAUL
ARE EAST AFRICAN CITIES
In 2002, the New York-based artist Julie
Mehretu was invited to undertake a residency
at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
As she tells it, she was quite surprised in
Creating abstractions of the physical world
i s no mean feat, posing the problem of how
t o represent the third dimension. Mercator's
20 projection of 1569 came as an almost this land of lutefisk and lefse s to get into
magical event, providing a synoptic image
a heated conversation with her airport taxi
of t he world which has dominated ever since. driver about cu rrent events in Ethiopia -
As cartographer Arno Peters demonstrated
where they were both born. On further invesi
n his alternative 1974 projection, the
tigation, it turned out that the largest
Mercator map accurately depicts the shape of Somali population outside of Africa lives
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See "Perils of Precision." p. 184.
The Peters M ap PrOject was undertaken in a class taught atlhe UniyerSlty
01 Minnesota in 2003 by artist Alfredo Jaar. Winton Chair in liberal Arts.
< www.pelersworldmap.org/>
4. Thomas Saarinen, "The Euro·centric Nature of Mental Maps of the World.-
R~.,,,,,.,,;,, 1':""",,,,,";,,1'",,,.,.,,1/,,,, I" IQ("IQ
5. Denis Wood. The Power of Maps. New York and l ondon: The Guilford
Press, 1992.
6. See .

p
Ei se/Where
Mapping
Mapping the Hom unculus
growing number of residents are from East
Africa by birth or heritage.
Mehretu decided to work with about 30
students from two Minneapolis high schools,
all of whom were of East African descent.
They were asked to complete two projects .
In one project , the students were asked to
photograph sites that mattered to each of
them and make a brief audio recording of the
significance of the image and locate where
it was taken on a map of the Twin Cities.
The tools for these projects were decidedly
low tech - a map of the Twin Cities, a notebook,
and inexpensive digital cameras and
recorders . Once the students had finished
recording their stories, the texts, images,
sound recordings and map locations were
entered into a database and the Belgiumbased
group Entropy8Zuper! (Auriea Harvey
and Mic hael Samyn) was commissioned to
design a combinatory map int erface.
The interface is an interactive audio-visual
collage composed of the sound bites and
photographs contributed by the students. You
can follow the stories of each participant
by clicking on nodes, and as you move from
spot to spot, you leave a t r ace, which cumul
atively maps yo ur route through t he interface-through
the content.
The nodes are not mapped to their geographic
coordinates; they provide an impressionistic
re-mapping of the city based on each participant's
selections and commentary . These are
the pl aces in the cities to which the
participants were particularly sensitive. In
addition , the interface references Mehretu's
own paintings, which consist of a seri es of
highly specific mappings painted over with
the vectors of explosive i nteractions.
One criticism that can be leveled at the
homuncular viewpoint is that one ends up
with a mishmash, without order . Perhaps this
is why Kevin Lynch-the city planner whose
infl uential book The Image of the City first
popularized the idea of using maps sketched
by individuals "in order to communicate,
study, and exploit personal cities" - didn ' t
publish a single one of the maps he
collected, "preferring to • summarize , them
in maps of his own devising. "T
This tension between instrumental profess-
Steve Dietz ,.,
3/6
The Presence of the Pa st, authors Roy
Rosenzweig and David Thelen examine, as on
reviewer puts it, "how deeply ordinary e
people are engaged with the past but at t he
same time are alienated from the hist ory
they have been taught. "' Rosenzweig writes
about this issue:
-.-...
Our survey respondents often used t he
past in complex and subtle ways, but
their approach was sometimes i n tenSion
with my hist orical t r aini ng and prefer.
ences . For example, I fou nd t heir
emphasis on the firsthand, t he ex pe rien.
tial, the intimate, and the f amilial to
be confining as well as illuminating.
At times respondents seemed primaril y
concerned with their own and their
family's pasts; the stories of others
were often ignored . This privat ized
version of the past, I worried, can
reinforce rather than br eak down barriers
between people, resist rather than
promote change.'
Indeed, while many of the 30 participants
in Minneapolis and St . Paul Are East African
Cities reported that participating i n the
workshops was a transformative experience,
its val ue t o vi ewer-participants may be i n
direct proport i on to t he hi stories-t heir
own homuncula r geographies-t hat t he y bring
to their viewing. Is there a way t o create
a wider base of experience without becoming
prescriptive, to honor the individual point
of view while ending up with an overall
point of view that has value for more people
than just the participants?
ionali sm and the homunC'Jlar perspective is Mapping the Homunc::ulus 5/6 p.204
............ !'!?~ ... ~_~.I!l.~.~ .~ .~ .. ~~ .. ~. ~~.y ... ~.~.~.~ .~ .~!'!~: ... ~. ~ ... !.~.~_ .. ~.~ .~~ ........................................................................................................ ---
See " Epic Vessels: pp. 248- 249.
1. See artists' proposal for PDPal < hllp://gallery9.walkerart.org/bookmark.
htmt?id=599&type _ text &bookmark= I >.
8. John Gillis. Rutgers University. quoted on the back cover of The Pre~
o{the P(Jst.
9. Roy Rosenzweig and Dav,d Thelen. The Presence of the Pdst:
of His tory in Amerkan Life. New York: Columbia University
Mapping
Mapping the Homunculus
PDPAL
PDPal, a mobile, public map -art project by
scott paterson, Marina Zurkow and Julian
Bleecker , pursues the notion of a "communicity"-a
city written by individuals and
f iltered by individuals to create alterna ·
t ive cartographies, both physical and
emot ional, which would never be found on
MapOuest , yet which collaboratively map the
homuncu l us of a city.
According to the artists, part of the i nspiration
for PDPal was entirely pe r sonal,
almost nostalgic:
When we were little, we really wanted a
little companion who would ride sidesaddle
on the crests of our ears. A
misc hievous and constant pal, who was our
charge and also our commentator , who gave
context and breadth to the worl d and
shoo k up our autonomic ways. to
PDPal is designed as a new way for users to
sha re t heir experiences and learn about
others' experiences of (in its initial test ­
ru ns, i n 2003) the Minneapolis Sculpture
Ga rden, the Twin Cities, and Times Square in
New Yor k. A mapping application for Pal m OS ­
based POAs and t he Web, it aims to transform
eve ryda y activities and urban expe r iences
into a dynamic ci ty that the user creates,
composed of the places in which she lives,
plays and works (recal ling Chombart de
Lauwe) as well as those she remembers. PDPal
allows the user to capture and visualize
these places and imaginatively capture the
meanings and histories of these pl aces so
they, in effect , "write their own city."
The most successfu l feature of POPal is
its use of a graphically-friendl y character
known as the Urban Park Ranger to nudge
users into thinking about their maps as
narratives as well as cartography. This
cha racter is designed both as an embodiment
of a software Help function, and as a provo ­
cateur, acting as a guide to help user s see
their city in new ways, by presenting yo u
with simple leading questions such as
"Which is noisier, Godzill a or a garbage
truCk? Map the beasts that roam your city . "
Steve Dietz
'.3
4/6
Gathering around the campfire screen would
definitely be the best way to listen to the
tales elicited by the Urban Park Ranger.
According t o Scott Paterson , PDPal is also
a new kind of virtual public art practice,
bridging the gap between the physical
and the virtual , the cartographic grid and
psychogeography, the personal and the
community:
POPal investigates met hods of construction
via dimensions beyond the latit ude
and longitude of geographic mapping
such as time, memory and emotion. PDPal
exists as a public art project in that it
considers mobile devices and the web as
a constantly shifting ephemeral public
space generated by the expressions of its
population of users-a place we call the
"communicity.""
Another significant aspect of POPal rel ates
to the fact that all maps represent i nterests
. Similarly, all interfaces, no matter
how neutral seeming, have an embedded
philosophy . To counter this or at least make
it apparent, POPal foregrounds its interface
thr ough the intervention of the Urban Park
Ranger. Notes Paterson :
Every project has a voice or bias. It's
the artist's prerogative to make this
voice explicit or implicit. Much software
-as-art work being done today has an
implicit voice in that the protocols are
inherent in the interaction, which is not
readily apparent because the project is
seen as enabling action rather than
l imiting it . The Urban Park Range r , on
the contrary , acts as a provocateur as
well as a host to explain the particular
bias of the software and in doing so,
informs the user of our critique of more
traditional mapping techniques . '2
When users log onto t he POPal website, their
city or personal map i s displayed, and can
al so be visualized alongside t he cities of
other POPal users and , eventual ly, f i l tered
according to various criteria-the ratings
and attr ibutes entered when making a map.
Users can connect with other users whose
homes are near theirs in order to see how
they imagine the shared neighborhood. Or
they can filter the maps by keywords used
when entering dat a, creating what the
PDPal is perhaps l ess successful as a device
for mak ing on-the-go entries (despite its
mobile format) and unlike, for exampl e,
Urban Tapestries, there is little advantage
_ ....... ~~ .. y.~.~w ing other people's maps in t he f i el d. artists r efer to as a "commu nicity" out of
See "The M~·~-G~~~·P; ;~~~·~i.:·~:·;01:················'''·''···· ··...--........................................................................................................................
10. See < www.walkerart.org/gallery9/jerome/> . 11. Scott Paterson. from an email interview between the author and the artists.
summer 2003. < hUP://gallery9.walkerart.org/bookmark.hlml?id=624&type
", text&bookmark .. l>
12. ibid.

El se/Where
Mapping
Mapping the Homunculus
Mapping
Mapping the Homunculus
Steve Dietz 205
6/6
by t he Banff New Media Institute, i s an open
so urce philosophy. As they write:
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··········· ·j~li~· M ;;h;~t~··Mi~~~~;~~~;;si;;;~i~·,;E~~iA;;,~~·~·c~i,:;~: 200i i·i·~i;;~~i;~~·~~·p~~~·d~i~~·se of I ~e TWin CiUes a.s seen
by Minneapolis high school students of East African descent. The project was led by E th loPIBn.~rn arhs! Mehre tu. whIle she was
an artist.in·residence at the Walker Art Center; interaction designers Entropy8Zuperi created the Interface.
fUtitHf H 12-13/13 pp. 198-199
-, +
everyone's personal cit y, without losing
access to the personal and the individual.
Everyone's individual maps can thus be
combined and recombined, so that PDPal
effectively image·maps the city without the
i ntervention of an authority.
open systems nevertheless need to take on a
life of their own - to emerge - if they are to
be truly successful . During the launch and
promot ion of PDPal, it received significant
use, but it is unclear whether the narrat
ives that are now being told are sufficient
t o keep the "communicity" growing. However,
each iteration of the project has made
enormo us conceptual leaps and adjustments,
and as the ability to add any geographic
base·map into the system becomes available,
PDPal has the potential to become a virtual
locus for homuncular storytelling.
Where as PDPal allows users to enter informat
ion from home, via the web, a number of
other current pro jects investigate personal
mapp ing, but require the viewer· participant
to be physically present at the location of
t he story in order to access it. The city
becomes the map, or perhaps more accurately
a telecommunications layer is overlaid on
t he physical city at a 1:1 scale. A user can
l eave a story about a particular location
at t hat location. When another user walks
by, her locati on-aware device can alert her
to t he presence of the story, to which she
may decide to listen while strolling about
the location.
GEOGRAFFITI
At t he core of the Geograffiti project by
Recen t l y, researche r s and free-GIS enthu·
si ast s have begun to share t heir data in
a va r iety of networking machi ne -search ­
able en vironments. enabling t he develop"
ment of a non· proprietary data pool of
human geography, whe r e meaning emerges
and i s inscribed at ground level. 13
GPS devices use "waypoints" that mark
a particular spot. Generally, these are
personal and not shared. but part of
Geograffiti is an open database (called
GPSter) of waypoints - or GPS-encoded
locations where someone has left a storywriting.
audio. video or some combination .
Geograffiti i s as much a platform for the
exchange of geographically-tagged information
as is a particular interface like
PDPal. but its goal is to enable "collabo r a·
tive cartography . . . to map according to our
desires, providing artists with tool s with
which . effectively, to step outs ide of the
box. whereby architectonic space now becomes
their canvas . " In other words, it is a
platform for mapping t he urban homunculus.
PANOPTIC AND HOMUNCULAR VISIONS
The future of computing is ubiquitous,
aware. embedded and distributed . 13
IncreaSingly, computers and de vices such
as RFID tags that communicate with computers
will be embedded in objects throughout our
environment. These skeins of computing can
and almost certainly will give rise to
nightmarish scenarios of Total Information
Awareness by governmental. commercial and
illegal powers. At the same time, especially
if we can maintain a system of protocols
that is predominantly open, these capabili·
ties can be used to give expression to
personal points of view which, in turn,
can be mapped into collaborative. alternative
visions. These will not be sufficient
actions. but they are important if we are
t o approach the lines of flight necessary
to imagine an alternative outcome to our
urban condition.
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13. Jeffrey Gennari, et at - Preparatory Observalioos Ubiquitous Knowledge
Environments: The CybennfrastrUCl ure Information Ether.~ Wave of/he
Future. 2003. .