Upcoming Classes

November 9: Mapping Tourism
Complete critiques from last week
Reading: Boyer, Shields, Lippard (e-reserves)
Project 2 Assigned: Mapping De-tours

November 16: Mapping Everyday Life
Reading: De Certeau (e-reserves); Debord (online); Abrams "Conversations as Maps, 1 & 2," Ross, Wood, Wood/Abrams/Hall (Else/Where)

November 30: Mapping Apparatuses
Reading: Holmes, Drifting Through the Grid, Tuters & Varnelis (online)
Technical: GPS, Google Maps
Project 2 check in outside of class this week.

December 7: Off the Grid
Reading due: Wood, "Maps are Embedded in a History the Help Construct," Fusco, Glendinning (e-reserves); Rundstrom (handout) In-class work time

Final Show: Sunday, December 10, 10 AM-4 PM

Final critique: December 15, 10:15 AM-12:15 PM

Overview

In this class, I will try to keep the concept of “mapping” expansive enough to encompass a wide range of practices dealing with orientation, wayfinding, place, and position (in both geographical and informational spaces) while at the same time being specific enough to continue being a useful investigative category and governing metaphor for our work. We will begin the semester with a consideration of the terms ‘map(ping)’ and‘art’, both to expand our understandings of what they mean and have done and to make some preliminary speculations on how we might use and question their traditions and processes in this class. We will then continue to look at both mapping and art side by side but through the lens of particular theoretical concerns, specifically how mapping is related to a range of modernity’s technologies of vision, what sort of subjectivities those technologies assumed and produced, and how those technologies are being rearticulated in an era of ‘pervasive’ computing, particularly around themes of wayfinding and mapping. We will also consider mapping along with other practices that together produce the spaces we often take for granted. Lastly, we will cast an eye toward the practice of data visualization, or the mapping of non-spatial information.

After this theoretical background, we get down to earth and delve more deeply into issues of mapping particular spaces: spaces of power, spaces of resistance, spaces of everyday life, and spaces of tourism. We will explore other mapping technologies, such as GIS, GPS and social mapping tools, in light of the theoretical concerns elaborated in the first half of the course and continuing to be refined in the second. We will close the semester with a consideration of when and why we might wish to leave territories unmapped, at least in the Western sense, and consider non-Euro-American mapping practices.

Interwoven with our scholarly work will be technical and creative experience. The first project will involve creating an online, nonlinear essay exploring theoretical issues discussed in class through the lens of a personal experience or one’s own relationship with mapping. We will do a range of exercises to prepare for this project conceptually and technically. The essay will be produced in Flash and incorporate images, text, sound, animation, and/or video. It will be due just after midterm. The second project will ask you to use one or more elements of the material and experiential culture of tourism to critically reflect on what it means to visit a place on or off the map. This project will be due the Monday of finals week to permit us to map a class show, location TBA.

Major Dates

October 5: Critique on Mini Projects 1-3; Progress report on Project 1

November 2: Midterm Critique

December 15: Final Critique/Group Show

MCMA 516, Fall 2006 / Thursdays, 2-4:50 PM, COMM 9E / Recommended Lab: Thursday, 6-8 PM, COMM 9E
Prof. Sarah Kanouse / Office: Comm 1121K / Tues 1-3 PM; Wed 3-5 PM; Thu 8:30-9:30 AM, 1-2 PM / kanouse@siu.edu