"Where are you from? The Plural nature of Reality- Art Historical Context"

2002

by Pat Badani

Where are you from draws upon a long history of mapping, unified into contemporary situationism through media technology. It attempts to map a new topography and extend current map-making practices in media art. Map-making belongs to the most ancient forms of art common to all primitive nations. The map created is destined to inform others about the "known" world as well as the "unknown" world, one yet to be discovered. New modes of map-making correspond to moments of expanding horizons and technological advancement, like during the European explorations of the 15th and 16th Century. The invention of practical instruments, professionalized what had been largely an intuitive craft very much attached to the notion of painted representation of the world. Yet, it is not until the 19th Century's positivistic and rationalized view of the world that map-making becomes a science. In the 20th Century the accepted, unitary Euclidean space breaks down thanks to new theories of relativity in physics, proposed by Einstein and Pontcare. The idea of a single referential space gives way to the idea of an infinity of spaces qualitatively and quantitatively different from each other. Today, expansion into cyberspace is providing us with new modes of exploration and the mapping of new geographies not bound to the ground. A new frontier lies in molecular and genetic characterization. This is expressed in the new gene map of the Human Genome Project, in which approaches to mapping include new technologies in expression profiling, sequence analysis and mutation analysis.The repercussions of these phenomena in 21st Century art are significant, due to the historical analogy between maps and pictorial space. Artists were liberated from mimetic figuration and a new order of representation of the world opens up with 20th Century avant-garde. Artists used the notion of mapping often calling for a type of fragmentation that would inhibit a unitary reconstruction of space. Maps became somewhat of a space-time converter, a sort of tool extending pictorial horizons to that of geography. Conceptual and Land-Artists leave the space of the studio in order to work in nature or in the city. In these instances the map becomes an instrument extending the art-works into real space, while the body in motion, becomes itself the measure of space. This type of map is offered as measure of a new Post-modern syndrome: the loss of sense of place. For some, the measuring system itself becomes the measure of space, an instrument of reflection where the space of representation merges with real space, like in the psychogeographies of Debord and the Situationsists. Towards the end of the 20th Century, the map becomes a surface that opened the potential for all kinds of inscriptions. Artists used the map not like a picture, but rather as a rhizome (Gilles Deleuze), and the notion of taking measure of space is completely reevaluated.Currently, architectural theorists like Marcos Novac, propose that cybernetic modes can lead us towards new ways of mapping the world. Cybergeography, which is based on information, reorients itself towards immaterial qualities that have to do with connections, relations and associations. Elements of interactivity that take into account the changed and changing conditions of our world, produce yet another shift in our mapping system. Traditionally a map is something that is read, observed, contemplated, consulted, and thus placing the subject as "observer". Interactivity and telematics challenge and reverse this fixed position. The observer becomes "participant". The resulting mapped form is a translation of fluid and heterogeneous qualities.Map making practices have expanded. Digital domains open new realms of exploration that might make the discoveries of previous centuries seem like small conquests by comparison. Instead of maps just telling us where we are, we now consult maps to acquire all kinds of information. Some of these maps can offer continually changing collages, identity signs and symbols; layers of information that bring to light the relative and plural nature of reality. My project is located precisely at this historical juncture.


Bibliography

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-"The Human Genome Research" : http://www.er.doe.gov/production/ober/hug_top.html