Maps as Media - Course Syllabus by Shannon Mattern Maps reveal, delineate, verify, orient, navigate, anticipate, historicize, conceal, persuade, and, on occasion, even lie. From the earliest maps in cave paintings and on clay tablets, to the predictive climate visualizations and crime maps and mobile cartographic apps of today and tomorrow, maps have offered far more than an objective representation of a stable reality. In this hybrid theory-practice studio we’ll examine the past, present, and future – across myriad geographic and cultural contexts – of our techniques and technologies for mapping space and time. In the process, we’ll address various critical frameworks for analyzing the rhetorics, poetics, politics, and epistemologies of spatial and temporal maps. Throughout the semester we’ll also experiment with a variety of critical mapping tools and methods, from techniques of critical cartography to sensory mapping to time-lining, using both analog and digital approaches. Course requirements include: individual map critiques; lab exercises; individual final critical-creative projects in a format of each student’s choosing; and small-group projects completed. Suggested readings:
This course draws on insights and inspiration from four years’ worth of students in my “Urban Media Archaeology” studio – and is indebted to Jeremy Crampton’s Critical History of Cartography reader; Marisa Olson’s “Media Studies: Experimental Geography Reading List” (Rhizome, March 20, 2009); RISD’s Experimental Geography Research Cluster; Matthew Wilson’s “Critical GIS” graduate seminar; and Wilson’s “Critical and Social Cartography” course.
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