Dietz_Mapping the Homunculus_2006.pdf - iSites

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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.