Maps and Society

This book offers a way of reading maps of the Holy Land as visual imagery with religious connotations. Through a corpus of representative examples created between the sixth and the nineteenth centuries, it studies the maps as iconic imagery of an iconic landscape and analyses their strategies to manifest the spiritual quality of the biblical topography, to support religious tenets, and to construct and preserve cultural memory.
Maps of the Holy Land have thus far been studied with methodologies such as cartography and historical geography, while the main question addressed was the reliability of the maps as cartographic documents. Through another perspective and using the methodology of visual studies, this book reveals that maps of the Holy Land constructed religious messages and were significant instruments through which different Christian cultures (Byzantine, Catholic, Protestant, and Greek Orthodox) shaped their religious identities. It does not seek to ascertain how the maps delivered geographical information, but rather how they utilized the geographical information in formulating religious and cultural values.
Through its examination of maps of the Holy Land, this book thus explores both Christian visual culture and Christian spirituality throughout the centuries. 

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503585260-1

Cet article propose une synthèse sur les différentes formes de cartographie participatives, qui ont émergé à partir des années 1980 dans le cadre de l’aide au développement, et se sont épanouies dans un tout autre contexte technique, avec les cartes numériques créées à l’aide d’interfaces de programmation, associées à un internet contributif, le Web 2.0. Dans un second temps, nous abordons les enjeux de ces cartographies, en montrant qu’elles matérialisent un transfert de pouvoir, mais ne sont pas exemptes de biais et de contraintes. Enfin, l’analyse porte sur le défi qu’elles représentent pour la cartographie en tant que discipline technique et académique, et leur intérêt pour une approche géographique des territoires.

Participative cartography, undisciplined cartographyThis article provides a synthesis of the various forms of participative cartography that emerged in the 1980s in the framework of development assistance, and flourished in a completely different context, with the digital maps created through application programming interfaces, associated with a collaborative and participatory internet, the Web 2.0. Secondly, we address the key issues of these cartographies, by showing that they materialize a transfer of power, but are not free from bias and constraints. Finally, the analysis relates to the challenge they represent for cartography as a technical and academic discipline, and their interest for a geographical approach of territories.

Resumen La Mapoteca Virtual de la Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica es una actividad permanente de extensión que busca promover el uso de las TIC (Tecnologías de la información y la comunicación), así como de las TIG (Tecnologías de la información geográfica) en Costa Rica. Sus funciones están concentradas en un sitio web que se exhibe a través de la ideología del Open Access (Acceso Abierto), el cual cuenta con una serie de productos de cartografía temática, manuales sobre cartografía, recursos electrónicos y publicaciones relacionadas a las Ciencias Geográficas y otras afines. Abstract The Virtual Map Library of the National University of Costa Rica it's a permanent connection activity that looks to promote the use of ICT (Information and communications technology) and GIT (Geographic information technology) in Costa Rica. Its functions are concentrated in a website that's exhibits through an Open Access ideology a series of products of thematic cartography, manuals about cartography, electronic resources and publications related to the Geographical Sciences and others related.

An event within the framework of the International Map Year 2015-2016, shown at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich in Januar 2016.

Shown examples of early School Maps from the 19th Century, the first National School Wall Map 1901/02, the influence of Eduard Imhof on the representation of Relief Mapping in the School Map Cartography and recent projects at Orell Füssli Kartographie AG.
Also on my concerns that under the influence of GIS Systems, free available low quality Maps and lack of knowledge of young decision makers the Swiss Cartography is on the decline, best represented in the new maps 1:25'000 from the Federal Office of Topography swisstopo.

In the thirteenth century, Italian merchant and explorer Marco Polo traveled from Venice to the far reaches of Asia, a journey he chronicled in a narrative titled Il Milione, later known as The Travels of Marco Polo. While Polo’s writings would go on to inspire the likes of Christopher Columbus, scholars have long debated their veracity. Some have argued that Polo never even reached China, while others believe that he came as far as the Americas. Now, there’s new evidence for this historical puzzle: a very curious collection of fourteen little-known maps and related documents said to have belonged to the family of Marco Polo himself.

In The Mysteries of the Marco Polo Maps, historian of cartography Benjamin B. Olshin offers the first credible book-length analysis of these artifacts, charting their course from obscure origins in the private collection of Italian-American immigrant Marcian Rossi in the 1930s; to investigations of their authenticity by the Library of Congress, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI; to the work of the late cartographic scholar Leo Bagrow; to Olshin’s own efforts to track down and study the Rossi maps, all but one of which are in the possession of Rossi’s great-grandson Jeffrey Pendergraft. Are the maps forgeries, facsimiles, or modernized copies? Did Marco Polo’s daughters—whose names appear on several of the artifacts—preserve in them geographic information about Asia first recorded by their father? Or did they inherit maps created by him? Did Marco Polo entrust the maps to Admiral Ruggero Sanseverino, who has links to Rossi’s family line? Or, if the maps have no connection to Marco Polo, who made them, when, and why?

The earlybird registration deadline - February 18th - is fast approaching. There are still some places available for this exciting new Summer School! "Cultural Mapping and Connecting with Place" 21 to 25 March 2022, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. For info and registration, visit: https://ces.uc.pt/summerwinterschools/?lang=1&id=28189

Trough out the centuries cities have been constantly changing, together withtheir image, their imageability, therefore their graphic representation is beingconstantly adapted to those changes too. The evolution of digital technologies enables now new forms of visualizing the city: from the geo-referenced representations of data to dynamic cartographies, that describe cities displaying inreal-time flows of data, information, things and people. Te tools that onceallowed the cartographer to make maps have radically changed: the empiricalanalysis of the environment has been transformed into a true work of digitalization, in a data flow, led by the evolutions of technologies and tools, such as GPS and GIS; inks and prints on traditional media are now visual representa-tions obtained through computers and softwares. Cities can be represented on a three levels model. Te level of the territory, which can nowadays be describedin detail; then the layer of activities, which shows the city through the analysis,the elaboration and the visual representation of data; and the level of sense, in which the subject is no longer external to the map: it is the centre of the visualization, the main point of view. In particular, the first level of territory becomesa political problem once the represented city is divided, segmented. For the sake of visualizing the divided city through maps, the dimension of the territory canbe overtaken. Showing a city without its territory can lead to a different focus: the meaning of a place in the construction of identity, the values shared by thepopulation, its habits, its everyday life. Mapping a divided city to obtain a ‘different’ visualization can be a way to deal with its complexity, with its layers of sense, generating a new idea of the territory

Йордан Цветков, Захари Савов
В контекста на поставените цели от инициативата Международна година на картата (2015 – 2016 г.) бе извършен превод на български език на потребителския интерфейс на ГИС софтуер с отворен код. За превод бяха избрани два от най-популярните безплатни софтуера с отворен код – QGIS и gvSIG. Настоящата статия има за цел да представи резултатите от тези преводи и да популяризира ГИС софтуера с отворен код сред българските потребители. (Цялото списание може да се изтегли и от тук: https://www.actualno.com/interest/izleze-novija-broj-92-na-spisanie-bylgarska-nauka-news_575735.html)

The ocean terrain spanning the globe is vast and complex – far from an immense flat plain of mud. To map this terrain accurately and wisely, we must understand how cartographic abstraction and generalization work both in analog cartography and digital GIS. This chapter explores abstraction practices such as selection and exaggeration with respect to mapping the oceans, showing significant continuity in such practices across cartography and contemporary GIS. The role of measurement and abstraction—as well as of political and economic power, and sexual and personal bias—in these sciences is illustrated by the biographies of Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, whose mapping of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge precipitated a paradigm shift in geology.

Participatory cartographies allow people to show on a map different situations that form the territory where they live. This process is carried out wiyhout intermediaries. Concerning heritage, participatory cartographies are being used to reflect those highly valued buildings, spaces or events that contribute to create the identity of a community. Moreover, these processes are useful to give expression to the relations and conflicts related to local heritage. In this article, four experiences concerning heritage and participatory cartographies are exposed: the sound map of Malaga, the Mapeandonos initiative, the workshop called “What maps don’t show” and the Malagaturismo project. In all cases goals, methodology and conclusions are presented.

This paper explores the Internet as a metaphor for the city and raises some issues associated with its use in relation to pervasive computing. It goes on discuss the idea of the electronic panopticon [1,2] and pervasive surveillance. It is presented as part of a workshop experience and juxtaposed against a series of pervasive technologies that are being developed at the Mixed Reality Lab. This gives attendees a platform on which to discuss theory and practice. Within our day to day existence duality occurs between the corporeal and our cyber (machinic) existence. Whilst browsing through the detritus of out of date pages, dead links and not safe for work (NSFW) images blowing through the streets of Cyberville, we become part of a system that has risks, [3] threats and thrills [4] associated with its use...

Many literary or scientific works had reached immortality by either its content or the author. Without a shadow of a doubt, Pîrî Reis' major work, a navigation book titled Kitab-ı Bahriye is one of those works that are passed down from generation to generation, light the way of historical process with the intense knowledge it contains, and guide researches and navigators. In Kitab-ı Bahriye which was written as a guide for navigators, sea towns are plotted in maps, bays are denoted, and information about ports for ships to berth, shoals, castles and habitants of these places are given.

A finales del siglo VIII, Beato de Liébana compuso el Comentario al Apocalipsis en el monasterio de San Martín de Turieno. Aunque no nos ha llegado en su estado original, esta obra es bien conocida gracias a las numerosas copias que se hicieron en los siglos posteriores y que la han encumbrado como una creación magna del arte medieval. Los Beatos –como se conoce el corpus– son especialmente aclamados por sus expresivas ilustraciones. Entre ellas destaca el maravilloso mappamundi que muestra la evangelización de los apóstoles alrededor del mundo. Esta imagen, presente ya en el manuscrito arquetipo, experimentó una interesante evolución a medida que el Comentario al Apocalipsis se fue copiando y editando entre los siglos X y XIII. Se conservan hoy catorce mappaemundi, a los que se pueden sumar otras obras cartográficas derivadas o emparentadas con ellos. Todos estos mapas constituyen el objeto de examen del presente libro, que estudia su evolución atendiendo tanto al contexto manuscrito en el que se inscriben, como al contexto cartográfico europeo, para plantear en última instancia la reconstrucción del mapa original del siglo VIII. Finalmente, la autora nos acerca a los detalles que componen estas imágenes para dar a conocer cómo se concebía el mundo en la Edad Media, y qué parámetros científicos, históricos, simbólicos y religiosos fueron empleados en su representación.

Una mirada a la historia de los mapas y la cartografía que han acomañado a la literatura de fantasía medieval en el último siglo. Publicado como artículo no arbitrado en el número doble de julio-agosto 2018 de la Revista de la Universidad de México.

The article explores the Jewish approach towards the biblical land as this was reflected in Jewish maps of that land, and points to the formation of the visual motif of Messianic Jerusalem in Jewish art.

KEYWORDS: maps of the Promised Land /the Holy Land, a Jewish map made in Mantua in 1560s, a map in the Amsterdam Haggadah (1695), Erhard Reuwich, Rashi, Exodus, Borders of Canaan, Tribes of Israel, Messianic Jerusalem, 'East Gate', Menorah, Feast of Tabernacle, cultural memory.

Colour is considered a key means of expression for use in cartographic works. This is because colours and the relations among them influence not only the aesthetic impression a map creates but also its overall utility. In addition to Newton's spectral colour theory, today theories with origins in artistic technique are gaining ground in cartography. This article introduces J. Itten's colour theory (first published in 1961 in The Art of Colour [Kunst der Farbe]) with special attention given to his concept of seven colour contrasts. The article also discusses the suitability and unsuitability of their application in practical cartography, and it contributes original examples employing thematic maps, a discipline with broad possibilities for the application of these inventive methods by today's mapmakers.

Towards the end of the eighth century, Beatus of Liébana composed the Commentary on the Apocalypse in the monastery of San Martín de Turieno. Although it has not come down to us in its original state, this work is well known thanks to the numerous copies of it that were made in succeeding centuries, and which have led to its status as one of the great creations of mediaeval art. The Beatus manuscripts are especially acclaimed on account of their expressive illustrations. Among them stands out the marvellous mappa mundi that displays the evangelization of the world by the apostles. This image, already present in the archetype manuscript, experienced an interesting evolution as the Commentary on the Apocalypse was copied and edited between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Today fourteen of these mappae mundi are conserved, to which we may add other works of cartography derived from or related to them. All of these maps constitute the object of the scrutiny of this book, which studies their evolution attending not only to the manuscript context in which they appear, but also to the European cartographic context, so as to arrive duly at a reconstruction of the original eighth century Beatus map. Finally, the author focuses on the details that make up these images to help us to know how the world was conceived in the Middle Ages, and what scientific, historical, symbolic and religious parameters were used in its representation.

The study of maps allows us to utilize information and technology to contribute to the betterment of society. New interactive forms of mapping are changing the way we understand natural and built spaces, and opening up new possibilities of development. At the same time, a deep understanding of the historical role of mapping is important to resisting and recovering from imperial domination. In order to subvert one form of knowledge production, one must understand the motives and methods of oppression. Maps reveal not only the geographic landscape, but also the landscapes of power and global politics. Just as they were essential to conquest, they are essential to liberation.

This is a the presentation delivered at the four-day meeting of members of the Brussels Map Circle with its Italian sister organization called Associazione Roberto Almagià in 2016. From 4 to 7 May map specialists from Belgium, Italy and Great Britain met at the Academia Belgica in Rome to exchange ideas on the so-called IATO atlases, otherwise known
as Lafreri atlases.
This contribution focused the importance of the "Priviliegio" asket to Venetian Senate and Roman Papal Court to protect the conceptual ideas and the formal aspect of maps in Rome and Venice during the early Renaissance.
A sample of the way of draw local maps from larger geographical context is provided with the Map of America by Paolo Forlani.

Google Maps’ satellite view of the Earth brings together photography and cartography to create an image that is deeply political. Despite the image’s ubiquity it remains without designation or theoretical framework. This essay seeks to situate Google Maps’ satellite view and will argue that the underlying cartographic projection combined with digital photography creates a representation that is potent and problematic yet somehow invisible.

Maps show the forms of power in a territory, but are also tools of that same power. They represent it and at the same time exalt it, consciously or not.
With accessible language and the aid of many colour images, this book seeks to introduce a theme that, whilst located in a field of study at the centre of social sciences today, that is of the symbolic dimension of power, is still too little analysed: spatiality of power and its cartographic expressions. It does this by telling stories and outlining characters, but aspires to be much more than just a simple collection of anecdotes: it in fact seeks to reconstruct historical evolution, from those cartographic products straddling science and art, heirs of the Renaissance tradition, to the graphic experimentations of geopolitical maps of today.
The protagonists of the book are therefore many: the maps as the objects themselves, their authors, the audience that utilises them, and the power that commissions them and that is portrayed, even if not appearing directly. However, in reality, the main protagonist is another still: the communicative act that is established between the map and the observer, which expresses all the richness and charm of cartographic language.
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Le carte geografiche mostrano le forme del potere sul territorio ma sono anche strumenti di quello stesso potere. Lo rappresentano e allo stesso tempo lo esaltano, consapevolmente o meno.
Con linguaggio accessibile e l’ausilio di molte immagini a colori, questo libro vuole introdurre a un tema che, pur collocandosi in un campo di studi oggi centrale nelle scienze sociali quale quello della dimensione simbolica del potere, risulta ancora troppo poco analizzato: la spazialità del potere e le sue espressioni cartografiche. Lo fa raccontando storie e tratteggiando personaggi, ma ambisce ad essere molto più di una semplice raccolta aneddotica: vuole infatti ricostruirne l’evoluzione storica, a partire da quei prodotti cartografici a cavallo tra scienza e arte eredi della tradizione rinascimentale fino alle sperimentazioni grafiche delle carte geopolitiche di oggi.
I protagonisti del libro sono dunque molti: le carte come oggetti in sé, i loro autori, il pubblico che le sfoglia, il potere che le commissiona e vi viene ritratto anche quando non compare direttamente. Ma in realtà il protagonista principale è un altro ancora: l’atto comunicativo che si instaura tra la carta e l’osservatore, momento in cui si esprime tutta la ricchezza e il fascino del linguaggio cartografico.

The automotive  world is evolving.  Ten years ago Nigel Thrift (2004: 41) made the claim that the experience of driving was slipping into our 'technological unconscious'.  Only recently the New York Times suggested that with the rise of automated driving, standalone navigation tools as we know them would cease to exist, instead being 'fully absorbed into  the machine'  (Fisher,  2013).  But  in  order  to  bridge  the  gap  between  past  and  future  driving worlds, another technological evolution is emerging. This short, critical piece charts the rise
of  what  has  been  called  'social  navigation'  in  the  industry;  the  development  of  digital mapping  platforms designed to foster automotive sociality.  It makes two provisional points. Firstly,  that  'ludic'  conceptualisations  can  shed  light  on  the  ongoing  reconfiguration  of
drivers,  vehicles,  roads  and  technological  aids  such  as  touch-screen  satellite  navigation platforms. And secondly, that as a result of this, there is a coming-into-being of a new kind of driving politics;  a 'casual politicking' centred on an engagement with digital interfaces.  We explicate both by turning our  attention towards Waze; a social navigation application that encourages users to interact with various driving dynamics.

The Garden of Eden also called the Terrestrial Paradise, or simply Paradise, is the biblical "Garden of God" described in the Book of Genesis and the Book of Ezekiel. Genesis 13:10 refers to the "garden of God", and the "trees of the garden" are mentioned in Ezekiel 31:9. The Book of Zechariah and the Book of Psalms also refer to trees and water, without explicitly mentioning Eden.
The name derives from the Akkadian edinnu, from a Sumerian word edin meaning "plain" or "steppe", closely related to an Aramaic root word meaning "fruitful, well-watered garden"
The location of Eden is described in the Book of Genesis as the source of four tributaries.
Among scholars who consider it to have been real, there have been various suggestions for its location: at the head of the Persian Gulf, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers run into the sea and in Armenia. When in reality it's the whole place that people call 'Earth'.
Like the Genesis flood narrative, the Genesis creation narrative and the account of the Tower of Babel, the story of Eden echoes the Mesopotamian myth of a king, as a primordial man, who is placed in a divine garden to guard the Tree of Life. The Hebrew Bible depicts Adam and Eve as walking around the Garden of Eden naked, due to their innocence.

In the 16th century under the reign of Elizabeth I, the Earth model was completely reformed (the Reformation) with the help of John Dee (the first secret agent). This was made known to the general public using the Globe theater in London.

The Garden of Eden has therefore been considered mythological by most scholars for centuries.

This gave the elite a big advantage in keeping their fortunes safe and building their wealth.

See other publications ;
Globemakers of Mortlake
https://www.academia.edu/34403391/Globemakers_Of_Mortlake
The Design That Fooled The World
https://www.academia.edu/14023736/The_Design_That_Fooled_The_World
Arthur
https://www.academia.edu/37755452/The_Real_Life_of_King_Arthur_And_His_Noble_Knights_Of_The_Secret_Lands_2016_Main_pdf

This thesis has been developed with the main purpose of seeking a method that facilitates collaboration between the artist and the community within the creative process in Urban Art. Further, it has been considered essential, on the one hand, to defend the importance of observing and understanding the urban context in which the artistic work will be developed. On the other hand, it is also encouraged to provide people with a tool for gaining an awareness and appreciation for the aesthetic atmospheres that surrounds them, while they participate in the artistic process itself.
To this end, a theoretical investigation has been carried out on the act of walking - a method studied over centuries as a technique of contemplation and meditation- as well as its role in contemporary art. Different artistic proposals in which walking has been performed in groups have also been studied. The research has so far been concluded with the analysis of a previous personal experience and with the realization of a co-creative walking project based on the studied concepts and referents. This involved various group experiments which were conducted inviting some inhabitants of the city of Dessau, Germany to take part. These experiences were accompanied by their respective interviews by the means of personal insights to be gathered.

Descargable en: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/42149                                                       

Esta tesis doctoral es el resultado de una investigación sobre la estrecha relación que existe entre la evolución histórica de dos ciudades, Granada y Nueva York –ejemplos de dos modelos de dinámicas urbanas completamente distintos–, y el modo en que ambas ciudades destilaron paralelamente a su proceso de “creación y puesta en marcha” una determinada representación, una cierta imagen de sí mismas, que se plasmó sobre todo –aunque no exclusivamente (a lo largo del trabajo quedará clara la importancia de otro tipo de cristalizaciones del imaginario, tales como vistas pictóricas o representaciones literarias)– en documentos cartográficos, es decir, en mapas y planos.

This thesis is the result of an investigation into the close relationship that exists between the historical evolution of two cities, Granada and New York –examples of two completely different models of urban dynamics– and the way in which both cities distilled parallel to their process of “creation and start-up” a certain representation, a certain image of themselves, that was captured above all –although not exclusively (throughout the work the importance of other types of imaginary crystallizations will become clear, such as pictorial views or literary representations)– in cartographic documents, that is, in maps.