User:Zpalomagar/RESEARCH SEMINAR

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. The Language of Global Polis - Otto Neurath
2. Diagrams of Power - Patricio Dávila
3. Cartography II: Collective Cartographies in the Social Media Era - Sébastien Caquard
4. Grapheses - Johanna Drucker
5. Counter-Cartographies: Politics, Art and the Insurrection of Maps - André Mesquita

THE LANGUAGE OF GLOBAL POLIS - Otto Neurath

A small description

The Language of Global Polis explains the life of Otto Neurath, and the challenges that he overcome on order to be able to develop a global visual language and make it public into several museums and exhibitions. Otto Neurath has important social concerns about how to invent modern metropolis after the war. This motivates him to community’s interests in order to make this metropolis work as a social machine ( wisdom of crowds) . He was part of the museum of war economy and the museum of society and economy where he created the Vienna Method Pictorial Statistic which will trigger later in the well-known isotype. Neurath worked very hard in the popularisation of information in order to make it legible and readable for non specialised audiences. He also applied this method to urban design, defining this communicative tool a key element for urban and social designers.

NOTES

COMMUNITY ( modern metropolis/ community and modernity)

• Participatory approaches to urban reform
• New attitude towards urbanism
• ‘Ordered disorder’ —> recipe for future development
• Neurath was of the opinion that Vienna had to improve its ability to communicate with its citizenry
• Tönnies —> Gemeinschaft —> translate as ‘community’ or ‘collectivity’

War and community

• Reprogram and reorganise the modern city
• See the state as a kind of giant factory whose mission is to “manufacture happiness”
• Industry
• In the article ‘The converse Taylor system’ 1917: Neurath argued that issuing questionnaires and conducting interviews that recorded information about the specific needs, habits and aspirations of workers could help factory managers and social planners better integrate individuals into society

DEMOCRACY

Challenge the social and economic hierarchies produced by the modern metropolis Working class in the museum WISDOM OF CROWDS - and power of mass collectives - promote inclusivity in the city

The museum of War Economy

• Furnish the public with a comprehensive understanding of Germany’s Economic conditions
• Offering a visual vocabulary and a system of metaphors through which to understand the social sphere
• He made more institutes in order to disseminate knowledge about the was economy through words and pictures
• Be interactive/ engage the spectator

The museum of Society and Economy

• Housing issues in more global and interdisciplinary terms ‘highlighting social relationships’
• Expand the public concept of community
• Give masses a les through which to better understand the world
• ‘Modern man receives a large part of his knowledge through pictorial impressions’
• Neurath problem that he has to face —> HOW TO VISUALIZE INVISIBLE PHENOMENA
• !GERD ARNTZ
• Organise the information so that it was presented as effectively as possible
• Neurath developed a system of graphic representation that made statistical data legible and accessible to non-specialised audiences —> Icons for multiethnic urban citizenry
• Simplified representations rather than to make scientific facts accessible to the masses —> Vienna method of pictorial statistic —> international system of typographic picture education —> ISOTYPE
• JAN TSCHICHOLD —> “AS A RULE, WE NO LONGER READ QUIETLY LINE BY LINE, BUT GLANCE QUICKLY OVER THE WHOLE, AND ONLY IF OUR INTERESTS IS AWAKENED DO THE STUDY IN DETAIL”

• PRINCIPLES OF VIENNA METHOD

1. More objects, more symbols —> every sign should represent a definite quantity and that as a given quantity increases, so also should the number of signs —> comparison
2. Graphic diagrams are two dimensional —> cubes and spheres are very difficult to compare
3. Every schema should be fully developed in order to create speaking signs that say no more than necessary
4. Color should be used as a fundamental tool for differentiation
5. The background of a diagram notates place

• First glance obvious differences must be distinguishable
• POPULARIZE INFORMATION
• Repacking designers with design methods ??????????? ******
• GOAL: promoting community and understanding across all socioeconomic divides

GLOBALISM

• Gerd Arntz —> toolbox of standardised pictorial sign
• Radical globalisation and standardisation
• Modern man in the making
• How to apply this globalism to urban design

WHY IS THIS BOOK INTERESTING FOR ME?

• Introduction of new participatory approaches as useful tools for urbanism
• Use people needs as a crucial factor to consider for social planners
• Introduce working class in the museum public so the element that are exposed there must be legible and understandable for a wide range of social profiles. —> Non specialised audiences. —> POPULARIZED INFORMATION
• In order to promote inclusivity, Neurath look for the solution in people defending the concept Wisdom of crowds
• He explore different mediums in order to engage the spectator - his role is transform (coding) the information in order to make it understandable and expressive
• He design a technique and a language in order to visualise invisible phenomena
• Jan Tschichold —> different approaches to reading

CARTOGRAPHY II: COLLECTIVE CARTOGRAPHIES IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA ERA - Sébastien Caquard

A small description

This article explore how social media are changing the way we collectively map the world through different practices like community mapping, new cartographic processes and technologies and geospatial knowledge with a special emphasis on crisis mapping. Some power relationships are also explained in this article between the state, the citizens and the private sector while developing collaborative mapping. Finally some tools for collaborative mapping are also explored from historical roots where indigenous cartographies had a crucial role to empower communities to those that would be used in the future with smart devices.

Notes

• How social media are changing the way we collectively map the world
• community mapping
• new cartographic processes
• geospatial knowledge
• crisis mapping
• indigenous cartographies

INTRODUCTION

• Paul Butler —> facebook friendship map
• geotagged data
• cartography of collective knowledge
• geographic layers, personal information and collective stories
• NEW COLLECTIVE CARTOGRAPHIES PRACTICES ENABLED BY SOCIAL MEDIA

COMMUNITY MAPPING

• Historically —> indigenous cartographies
• Political function of this cartographies
• performative dimension of community mapping
• participatory GIS
• hybridised forms of spacial representation
• Artist are working in enabling local communities and marginalised groups to express their own perspectives on their territories throughout alternative cartographic processes

COLLABORATIVE MAPPING

• geo-crowdsourcing
• simultaneous editing of content by multiple users
• why to contribute? —> idealism or local needs
• first participatory geo project —> share information about katrina hurricane
• crisis mapping
• It’s not only about collecting data from the crowd but also about returning this information to the crowd
• devices as medium (small-screen)

MAPS, STATE, CITIZENS AND CORPORATIONS IN THE GEOSOCIAL MEDIA ERA

• two-thirds of these initiatives had been sponsored by for-profit institutions , with only 7% bt governments
• incapacity of the state to fulfil some of its missions such as providing relevant geographic data to its citizens

CONCLUSION

• cartographies can develop new spaces of mutual understanding
• improve response time and efficiency during post crisis situations
• most important promise can be what it can tell about local activities
• maps as the reproduction, reinforcement and legitimation of cultural and political values *** The main difference is that for centuries these values had been defined by state and now the reflect individuals.
• corporatiste technocracy

GRAPHESES: VISUAL FORMS OF KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION - Johanna Drucker

-- REAGING IN PROCESS --

In our current screen-saturated culture, we take in more information through visual means than at any point in history. The computers and smart phones that constantly flood us with images do more than simply convey information. They structure our relationship to information through graphical formats. Learning to interpret how visual forms not only present but produce knowledge, says Johanna Drucker, has become an essential contemporary skill.

Graphesis provides a descriptive critical language for the analysis of graphical knowledge. In an interdisciplinary study fusing digital humanities with media studies and graphic design history, Drucker outlines the principles by which visual formats organize meaningful content. Among the most significant of these formats is the graphical user interface (GUI)--the dominant feature of the screens of nearly all consumer electronic devices. Because so much of our personal and professional lives is mediated through visual interfaces, it is important to start thinking critically about how they shape knowledge, our behavior, and even our identity.

Information graphics bear tell-tale signs of the disciplines in which they originated: statistics, business, and the empirical sciences. Drucker makes the case for studying visuality from a humanistic perspective, exploring how graphic languages can serve fields where qualitative judgments take priority over quantitative statements of fact. Graphesis offers a new epistemology of the ways we process information, embracing the full potential of visual forms and formats of knowledge production.

Key points

• Knowledge and/as vision —> visual ordering / issues of interpretation
• Language of form —> Visual forms have been classified and characterised
• Dynamics of form/universal principles of design
• Gestalt principles and tendencies
• Understand graphics and editing
• Processing images
• Typology of graphic forms present ways classifying

COUNTER-CARTOGRAPHIES: POLITICS, ART AND THE INSURRECTION OF MAPS - André Mesquita

Notes

Strategies of critical cartography

• Comprehending conflicts, networks, territories, borders and situations which were previously invisible.
• Sharing techniques and new technologies.
• Producing autonomous knowledge

• This maps go beyond conventional maps, opposing impartial representation and objectives followed by corporative mititar and governmental interest
• History of the maps: instrument of domination
• *Bureau d’Études / Counter-Cartographies Collective / Iconoclasistas

MAKING DOMINATION VISIBLE

• Maps that break with the scientific tradition and specialisation of cartography —> go against official geopolitical maps
• Stabilises powers more perceptible in order to confront them
• Protocols and dilemmas of collaborative work —> systematisation of data
• Through collective mapping, the language, tools and techniques of cartography formerly restricted to “specialist” are socialised and reinvented —> expanded to non conventional uses
• Dadaism and surrealism —> Fluxus —> challenge rigidity of maps
• World Map does not register asn exact mapping of the physical geography of the planet. Rather it is the quantity of information that shapes the form on the continent
• *Öyvind Fahlström / Mark Lombardi
• Artist-activists —> political, social and economic processes, organising it in maps or diagrams to analyse situations of the present.

USE VALUE AND ARTISTIC AUTONOMY

• Alternative experiences of publication (artistic autonomy)
• Popular participation
• Collaboration and cooperation increase the complexity of the power and critical grasp of a map
• Electronic distribution of the project
• Through these maps a new sense is conferred too cartography. Cartography is not only a particularised activity or a restricted knowledge but can also be seen as a possible project that disseminates as much as possible

MAPPING OR BEING MAPPED

• Transform cartography into a tool of criticism and counter-power
• Why to produce more maps in a mapped world? We need to make and remake maps not only in order to confront the forms of control but also so we can expose the underlying mechanisms.
• Counter - cartography is less a visual object that accumulates information than the opportunity to go beyond the “proper” representation of traditional maps —> redefining maps critically
• Spirit of counter-cartographies: To map systems of oppression, not oppressed people!

DIAGRAMS OF POWER - Patricio Dávila

Diagrams of Power is the catalog book of a exhibition that was presented under the same tittle first in Canada and then in Eindhoven where several maps and diagrams were displayed Diagrams of power is a collection of maps and interviews with several artist, researchers, architects, activists and cartographers who create diagrams to tell inconvenient stories that upset and resist the status quo

We draw diagrams to communicate or even for ourselves, Diagrams of power work against representation that claim omniscience by speaking from a position and make visible social voices that collaborate in the production of this maps. This is about visualising, mapping and performing resistance.

This book link the work of several offices and individuals through diagrams as tool. We can find talks and interviews with most of the people who participate in the exhibition

Some great discoveries:

• Bureau d’Études
• W.E.B Du Bois
• Forensic Architecture
• Iconoclasistas
• Lize Mortel
• Laura Poitras
• Josh Begley
• Catherine D’Ignazio