caveat.be → LTSF → LTSF mapping.md

15/11 - Meyboom Discussion with AC - cancelled Meeting that discusses Mapping Tool through Julie's text for Innoviris Present: Jesse, Katleen, Louise, Ronny Minutes: Katleen

Design: we need a start page + modus operandi page a search function to discover the relations between shards that have been uploaded shards are static - see also Justin's link https://andrewpekler.com/phantom-islands/

Relations -direct - a collaboration -indirect - sharing a document

ex: uploading an elaboration on a document - see Image Seconde article the map activated in a public session - cfr reading room - chose one document and discuss it together in a public session see also: Dewey Library sessions

ex: Ant Hampton / https://timebasededitions.com/ how to work with archive, images... and develop a conversation around these documents that in this cse have been printed as book

ex: Slavs and Tartars lectures - a slide show that incorporates some of their work, but in essence is a lecture that also comprise a geo-politcal narrative, and thus documents and images that nto necessarily qualify as 'art works' by S&T

Legal models - discussion based on Julie's text for PYSI (Innoviris) - distributed via email

contractual framework: -we need to develop a contractual famework which from the beginning of the engagement with an institution clarifies how remuneration will be invoiced

-artists are encouraged to include the mapping tool in their public lectures, but of course this is not an obligation to individualize the mapping tool is only possible in a limited sense - but in essence it is a collective aesthetic

-Q: to which extent can Nadine be considered an author? Ex: the concept of Kunst & Zwalm 2023

-fair use licence: a return for the user/artist but also for the collective since the tool has a collective author

Economic model -individual remuneration of lectures on the artists' work through the mapping tool are split 50/50 between the artists and the collective Jubilee -collective presentations are per definition invoiced by Jubilee - after which the income can partially be distributed among the presentors; the remaining part will be used to cover collective costs, such as maintenance of the tool, emprovement... Also here a 50/50 split can be used as a general rule

-authorship of the mapping tool: open source agreement

-develop licencing agreement to use the open source tool ex: fair use licence - see: DisCO only free for non-profits; payable for other groups how to develop a source of income in this context?

-yearly membership: would this generat income to maintain the tool? for peers, for public for uploading, for consulting ex: in context of federation: all partners in the federation need to pay a yearly fee How to account for the initial investments made by the initiators of the project?

-punctual membership (for a specific use) ex: a temporary use in a presentation by third parties - David Aubin wants to use the tool in one of his classes?

-how can the use of the tool grow a group of people that gradually initiate their own specific use of the mapping tool

-the mapping tool as a collection of a library - with membership fees

-the mapping tool is also a platform that brings together people in order to activate uploaded shards

Comments AC: YOUR QUESTIONS Some elements, we did not fully understand: - maps should be already zoomed in so it frames the accurate area, not all Europe for instance Could you give a specific example? There are three maps we need to fill out: place, journey and space. When uploading a new item each time we saw a map with Greenland? This seems to have chnaged now - it's Belgium we see now

The prototype currently under development should already have all three levels operational. What three levels are you thinking of here? We were referring to the work that still needs to be done:
How / what do we upload ? -> addressé dans la documentation qui accompagnerait l'encodage dans django admin + des formulaires dans django plus clairs
What do we see when things are uploaded? -> spécifier dans la doc
How do we make relationships between uploaded things visible ?

Additional notes after meeting with Loes on 3 November 2023 Present 3/11: Loes, Phyllis, Katleen, Ronny

Proposed name: SHARDS

the 3 general questions Max formulated remain central: 1/How do we upload ? -can we work together on an operating manual? maybe AC can upload one or two projects, run through the whole mapping protocol, so that we can observe what functions how... -what do we see when we upload: not clear at this point

2/What do we upload ?
-this is a collective dialogue between partners (with or without AC) that could be organised monthly?
we imagine this as a type of reading room during which we discuss documents that are proposed to be uploaded. The discussion on these documents could be registered / transscribed and become part of the information on the mapping tool.

3/Making relations visible through the creation of archipelagos
-this is a question that needs to be addressed if we want the tool to land as a prototype of what we had in mind.
The prototype currently under development should already have all three levels operational.

Additional questions: - markers on maps should be more visible (light blue, not bold enough) - is this related to the symbol that we need to upload, as a way to personalize markers?

-Can we include Traces as part of the archipelago - for the content of the research (for example an archive document)

When uploading info - it is not clear if there is a difference between elements that are so-called part of the archipelago and elements that are not

-We would like use Narratives as themes that can link elements on the map - in that way we would be able to create relationships.

-multiple options need to be available if choices re requested: ex - type: walk - but in the same gesture there might also be an 'exhibition'. Now we can only chose one type.

-resolution of the images? how heavy can files be? the images of the maps are currently not legible, look rough,... do we need to use a specific format ex jpeg?

-Announcement: only possible to mention indoor - but some things happen outdoor. and sometimes both are the case. Not possible to mark this now. Also missing is date, place. A map might be convenient? These may all be present through different links that the map already makes, but for us at this moment that is not a transparent process...

-Should specify how elements relate to each other? Ex: direct realtion - a work of artist X is presented in a project of organisation Y: ex: 7 Walks in Kunst & Zwalm 2023 Ex: indirect relation - a document can be shared in different practices at different moments

design see: https://andrewpekler.com/phantom-islands/ when you click the link you come to a starting page that offers an introduction to the mapping tool. we would need something like that as well, a place where visitors can start, with an introduction, and that also includes the different tools they can use to browse the mapping tool.

our side panel needs design work and should be clickable (open or close); or could appear when you click a shard shards need to be accessible so you can see the full image/map etc... At this point the shards are not very functional, photos not visible, maps not legible. we need to be able to go into a shard, at which point the side panel could appear with info and hyperlinks.

individualiseren? nota

Meeting 17 October 2023 Present: Ronny, Katleen, Loes, Louise, Max, Clementine, Jesse

Ronny introduces Innoviris programme Proof Your Social Innovation. Sees a possibility for the mapping tool as a cooperative innovative projects. The program is about testing out scenario's / a tool / a business... 6 to 18 months Timeline: 31 October, 1 page draft Feedback by Innoviris specialist technical dossier deadline 30 November

Max shares that Smart wants to get rid of LaVallée. Smart rents it, becomes too expensive.

Max: general questions we need to address with AC: - How / what do we upload ? - What do we see when things are uploaded? - How do we make relationships between uploaded things visible ?

The prototype currently under development should already have all three levels operational.

In this meeting we mainly focused on the uploading question.

1/How / what do we upload ?

In the Mapping admin page we go through the 4 terms that we choose as constitutive of an archipelago: practice, gesture, announcement, marker

We use From Chimeny to Chimney as test case.

Questions that come up in this process:

-Why do the titles under Announcements and Markers in the Index page of the map not become bold and clickable? 
-How to create & correctly save a journey? 
- markers on maps should be more visible (light blue, not bold enough)
- maps should be already zoomed in so it frames the accurate area, not all europe for instance 
- Can't we copy paste a journey we made in our maps (google, openstreetmaps) to ease the journey tracing ?
-Can the lines for a journey follow streets rather than straight lines? We tried and it stops after three clicks.
-Can we indicate more than one Place (in Gestures, Situations, etc)? 
-Can we include Traces as part of the archipelago - for the content of the research (for example an archive document)
-Can the names of the shards be displayed when we hover over them
-Can we go into a full view of the shard? Possibly losing its shape... 
-Can urls be visible as clickable links? Can we create an embedded links (like control+K) to a text?  
- Can we add layout and formatting to text fields? (Bold, italics, underline, headers, embedded links, etc) Which are recognised also when copy-pasted from somewhere else? 
-We would like use Narratives as themes that can link elements on the map - in that way creating relationships.
-Can we link practices to (multiple!) traces, gestures, situations, narratives? So that they can be 'shared'/'co-owned'?

We focus on: - Practices - Gestures - Markers - Announcements + Traces + Narratives

In those, we need to have the choice to fill or not fill in the others categories, because some are not relevant and we need to reduce / simplify the uploading and reading of each element. In most case the precision can be added in the description, and content should be added through uploading the traces.

We need to add Traces to the active elements with the four others. that's actually the content of the gestures, what we need to be able to organise and access through the map (archives, documentation, excerpts of discussion...)

Why is a marker important as a categorie as such ? Can it be an attribute / feature to a geolocalised gesture / announcements / traces ?

2/What do we see when things are uploaded? In this stage the relation between what we upload and what we see is not very transparent. We have the impression that we upload a lot of information, but not sure where it becomes visible. Some info on the display map are indications? For example where can we see the maps?

The archipelago and shards: how can we have a full view of what is on the shard? When pictures or maps stay in the boundary of the shard everything is tiny.

There are markers/dots outside of the shards, but we can not open them.

General View: How will the 'front' page look like/the archipelago of all the islands? Then the smaller archipelago and then the single island.

The side panel and the use of (longer) texts on it...

From Practices, can the terms 'concept', 'theme', 'method' be invisble on the front end?

3/How do we make relationships between uploaded things and between people visible ? Katleen: how about affilations/affinities, collaborations?

VIEW: How to show the relationships?: -with lines or proximity? - the shards/islands moving closer to each other when they share traces (f.e. documents), situations(contexts/themes), collaborations..? -Clementine made a drawing in a previous AC meeting, with shards showing a next shard underneath it as they show in fields of depth the relationships becoming visible... -Could something be done with the 'in between space'? (Now there are markers in that empty space...) It would be good to discuss a number of possible options that are technically feasible. (curated relations, use of hashtags, search functions, upload data...?)

We think what shows the relationships (like the movement of the islands for example) should not be arbitrary (algorithm), nor stay fixed in a particular relationship for ever. Collaborations change, new projects will be uploaded, new documents shared...

People behind each element (credits, gesturer, or names in the text of the practice), can generate connections by an algorithm. But are these really that interesting? (=arbitrary)

Shared traces? (example: can a search function find all shared documents that we use in our individual or collective projects?)

Shared gestures? (example: not search for all 'walks', which is arbitrary, but for a collaboration as characteristic in the walks)

Collaborations?( example collaborations on the shared text for Techniques Journal)

Shared places? (example: using the same watermill for different practices at a different time. Overlapping walks in Brussels that pass by the same places, by the same authors at anoter moment in time, or by other authors)

The above list seems more promising to highlight a relational infrastructure. We come to a point where we think that listing specific themes can be a way to connect different shards and their content. For example: That's how we came to the idea to list under Narratives as themes that as such can link elements on the map.

Co-owning / co-sharing elements that help travels from archipelago to archipelago

Maybe through the word 'situation' that can be 'co-owned' / 'shared'. Rather than refering to institutional context (institution can be in credits), we would like to use the word situation as 'context', 'theme', 'constructing a (collective) situation'. (For example a moment, event in which a shared document/object can be activated: for example the flower created at the water mill during V&H 7 Walks Zwalm project was used at the oven in Brussels in a life event of Atlas of Ovens)

How do the islands form constellations into archipelagos? How do the archipelagos form constellations into the main map? Can this have something to do with possible relations between people, objects, documents, themes??

NAME: still need to find a good name for our tool, mapping an archipelago of practices...

REPORT Mapping Tool Meeting at meyboom

20230907 -VG project funding application, function "reflection" (see * at the bottom of today's note for criteria): how to make sure we formulate our questions in a way that they are relevant for the wider visual arts field?

Ronny: edit collectively rather that individually - discursive programs/and practice based programs in relation

Jesse: Analogy with questions for presentation institutions of questions risen: How to govern the tool as a commons? How to create agency for the transdisciplinary, ephemeral, collective (etc) practices it presents? How to make collaborations visible? How to distribute labor? Who has access to the tool? Should it be curated? Etc

Max: Showing a relational infrastructure of artistic practices > tool makes them tangible <> compare d15 catalogue

Loes: Practices in public space, often cartography element, people are aware of the relevance of these practices

Pierre: The tools one uses reflects the politics. Making relationships visible between information systems & social systems Let's leave space for speculation in the tool, what can be the social behavior & desires?

Max & Loes: situated practices are often difficult to make visible/sharable, here we have a tool that can. Loes: the type of practices that go in the tool are linked to cartography, in that they are often prctices in relation with a place, through walking, bicycle tour, ... -How do artistic practices engage with one another, exchanging, informing,..? Deconstructive element of the map.

Max: Describe workshops AC did? Specific system: how to design a (mapping)(presentation) platform? Format/creation of innovation & mediation.

Julie: to be scheduled: Workshop specifically about the map, which layers should appear? How to visualise relations?

Relating to wish list items (below, formulated during early stage of the project) 4/ connecting different communities

Atlas of Ovens invite different communities that are not necessarily artistic (+ CIVA & MOT), upload bread ovens, reflect of CIVA <>invite MOT and AC to reflect on that

1/ tool for sharing & activating knowledge and narratives

connecting archives & practitioners. How to activate documents?
Assemblies: reflection Workshops: working on mapping
Maybe better: work sessions with AC during daytime (reflect THROUGH), public programme in the evening (reflect ON, with invited guests and talk, film or performance)

Nadine's reflection formats: conversations 2x per year, streamed live & recorded, transcribed afterwards into booklets. With 4 makers and a conversation facilitator. <> 5/ publishing opportunity / documents & narratives : immediately open to show the process NB check with OSP about their application on printing publications from online tools.

8/ added value / interconnectedness
How to make this into a proper relational tool? Access won't be open, but it could be federated: It's open to multiplication, federation,

AC: sthing about the socio technical arrangement produced with/by the platform Uploading content into the tool, to replace placeholders etc: 2 working sessions before the commission comes together (end of October): Breakfast sessions on 3 and 17 October?

Working title Agora, Ecclesia (<>Reclus) Placeholder Tupaia Did anyone consider "Archipelago" as a name? You use the term a lot in the text!

*Criteria for the function reflection a. the quality of the intended reflection on artistic practice or the art field Define the artistic, cultural or art-critical content of your project. Indicate to what extent it contributes to knowledge about art or the arts field, and how it feeds discussion about (the developments of) the arts and/or the arts field. Indicate in what way the project promotes reflection on art (practice) and/or the arts field in the Dutch-speaking region and/or the bilingual Brussels Capital Region. To what extent does the reflection feed and strengthen the discussion about (the developments of) the arts or the field of arts? b. the extent to which the intended reflection can have meaning for the arts field Justify the way in which your project promotes reflection on art (practice) and/or on the arts field in the Dutch-speaking region and/or the bilingual Brussels-Capital Region. Explain to what extent it contributes to knowledge about art or the arts field. Justify how your project feeds and strengthens the discussion about (the developments of) the arts or the arts field. c. the quality of the way in which the reflection is disseminated and made accessible Explain in what way you make the reflection accessible (website, publication, workshop, exhibition, sound recording, image recording, conference, ...). Justify why the medium or combination of media you choose is the appropriate channel to reach your audience and demonstrate that you also reach the desired audience. Discuss your plan of approach to audience outreach and accessibility. Indicate which partners you are working with and why. Explain how you deal with after-care of the communicated results (e.g. keeping a website up-to-date).

20230614

-After testing out the first draft of the map we discuss how we can make the ‘ecology of practices’ visible: not only islands on their own and individual projects, but find ways to show relationships, collaborations and links. -For example, a document found in the archive in Spa can be the link between V&H, Clementine, Max and Ciel who have also used, or commented on this document.

-How to show the movements of the islands and their relationship, that should not (only) be geographical. Options are: edited (control) or computed (automatic) movements of the islands according to the models (data). All models can be parameters to make these links. Automation creates random links that can be interesting, but also banal.

-We can use tags (e.g. ‘property relations’, ‘water rights’, ‘value distribution’,… to link certain content. Tags should not be too general (people, water, fire…)

-How will the home page appear? Clementine made drawings: a second archipelago appears behind the first one. link to cloud?? We can see shared documents, shared uses, shared narratives, shared space and time, and whom it is shared with. (e.g. a reading room or assembly has a shared text, we come together in the same space and time to discuss it, and comment it, share existing and new narratives, create new narratives (activate document, describe, give context to that document)

When we have a summer school we share place and time, comment on our practise and gestures, create new narratives together, share documents…

-Homepage presents all the gestures, without traces. Does it show static islands? Not when you add new islands. You can use a random change. They can move based on affinities. You write it along database of existing models. This can create distances between the islands.

-Do we need new models that can help us show relations? For example ‘collaborations’ and ‘share’, and ‘federation’. (share themes, share issues, methods with other organisations to create more agency)

Observations: -It reminds me of Tupaia’s map where the navigator is still, and the world moves around him. It is an abstract and embodied map. -Does the marker itself can show a small story on the map itself? -What meanings can the white space between the shards generate? (Speculative shards of the map of Rome by Piranesi) -The map as an active agent: it might change how we organise walks. It can generate new narratives, surprising collaborations and links. Collaborative knowledge production through the map.

To do: -glossary clarification of words and definitions -a title for the mapping project -new models needed, double ones eliminated -how organisations can use tool and are terms in glossary useful for them (e.g. ‘practice’)

Quick remarks when encoding, from Clémentine :

Situation is still unclear to me. It doesn’t seem to fit our atlas of ovens’s program although I think that’s a a good focus for the future of the map. For instance, 019 isn’t the most interesting archipelago to focus on, it would be very empty in our case ? Can situations be a phd proposal ? A common question - a summer school ? If we focus on what makes things happen ? The situation in our case is the grant we had for instance ..

I wonder also if not every archipelageo isn't a situation, and the map helps us travel from one situation to another, either by zooming into different fragments contained in one big (vertical zooming in) or through "portals" which would be common fragments.

are people islands too ?

When adding an associated ressources and having to fill the “finder” : can’t it be a multiple choice answer ? For instance, in the gesture of the workshop “algae to ashes, ashes to glazes”, there is this associated ressources: the 300 year old algae. It has been found by Ronny, Kathleen, Scott, Clémentine, it comes from another situation… I have the feeling that it is rather in the material we share in research and projects and on which we rebound for the next ones that we will find nice connections. It would help show that in situations shared (summer school Laeso), ressources (Algae) are brought to our toolbox for our connecting projects (atlas of ovens).

the challenge is to see the overlaps of situations rather than the link between individual participants.

For instance that would be interesting to be able to have “traces” of a gesture becoming a “associated ressources” for the next one. This island would be an intermediary stop, a link to navigate from one project to another - from one situation to another.

Sometimes difficult for me to differentiate “traces” and “associated ressources” - for me clearer : what is preparatory research elements and documentation of the gesture - maybe then also what is brought by other participants on the spot… that is to discuss with what criteria can be added on each of them.

I also felt stuck a lot of time with not being able to complete an upload because I didn’t have an element of answer from the list of requirements, that It didn’t fit with the specific element in question. Also sometimes I would also like to add the credits, or another info that the list doesn’t propose.

We could discuss the idea of having more multiple answers possible, as well as being able to define more freely what we want to add as complementary infos…

    * Announcements : we can’t upload a picture ?

    * “Partenaires institutionnels” ? where do they fit ? Without being situations

    * Participants : of workshop for instance - who do we integrate, how to facilitate their permission to be noted ?

    * Can we discuss the meaning behind “reason” when entering traces / resources

    * Adding multiple traces such as pictures from an exhibition, opening, or a list : when there is a lot, that’s quite long to upload all of them ? Is there an option when we can group ?

    * Traces : why the public option ?

elements to tackle tomorrow ? (from short discussion with AC this afternoon):

feedbacks after having had uploaded our content go through our technical remarks
agree on the terms of the glossary and define a "hierarchy" / structure draw screen by screen what we would see to help us make decisions
tend towards solutions so the map visualise the "relational" aspect of our practices

Prepatory Remarks Mapping Tool 20230612

The choice of Models? Choice of words for the 'models' is not very transparent, some need extensive definitions, we could make these more simple. Gesture can be title; situation can be context. What is the exact difference between: gesturer, person, practicioner?

Gesture type: I can only indicate one type... is a combination Possible?

Practice is visualized as island/shard: the text part is too narrow. Unfolding text possible?

Do we want the 'model' (words like 'gesture', anouncement, situation...) to be visible for the user/audience of the map?

Extra Models necessary? -'exchange': Is there a possibility of discussion amongst contributors within the mapping tool? Can we comment on each other contributions? Share documents, information, discussions? Maybe this level does not need to be publicly visible? -'collaboration': as model to be used and filled in, so collaborations can be made visible as a parameter as well?

Maps Marker: the blue dot is difficult to find. Can we add a small text with the dot? Or when you click on it. It is difficult to add e.g. local narratives in the right hand text which identifies the gesture etc...

What should become an Island, one individual shard? For now, we have practices, gestures, traces, associated resources, markers and announcements.

We find it strange that the island should be there on its own. We go immediately to individual practices and the relations with other contributors is gone. It becomes an island in a void. A possible solution is perhaps to keep the relationships with other islands from the archipelago in the background? I agree, looking at one island alone doesn't help situate the element amongst the others. When on a the map, I'd like to always see what other fragments are closeby. The column on the right seems to be the space where we focus on the content of the shard itself. having a view on one shard on the left, with elements on the columns seems like a double focus on a singular element.

For instance, from the index, when clicking on “fire smoke and dust”, it would be nice to arrive on the map with the archipelago of “atlas of ovens” since it’s what is explained on the top right “This gesture takes place within the practice Atlas of Ovens”

What is visible is: one individual shard + text column on the right. It is static information. The column is very limiting; it can only function as a kind of identity label, not as a place to insert a longer text. Other solutions? Unfolding window? Or keep text external with a link?

Parametres that define relations between islands and could show them closer together or further away (see drawing Pierre). Time (when): via 'Announcement' place (where): via 'Announcement'; Marker; Situations subject (what): via 'Narratives'; 'Announcement'; Associated Resources; Credits; Field of Expertise; Traces method/form (how): Gesture type collaboration (who): via 'gesturers', 'Announcement'; Field of Expertise; Organisations; Person; Practicioner

What should the Archipelago show? What group of shards - archipelago - do we want to display? Here, a first answer that came up was to have the situation as an archipelago, as it is the place where gestures from different practice can meet. (this is a question to answer after you added several elements to the platform).

We think the relation between the practices and contributors would be very limiting if it was only place. These can be a coincidence and not the result of a real collaboration for instance. Which relations are we looking to make visible? That is why we thought if we create 'collaborations' as a model, this parameter can be used to make the islands move closer or farther away from each other.

Can we also use the other models as parametrs to change the location of the shards in relation to each other? The archipelago could show all Announcements for example, but also use the parameter of time, gesturers, credits, narrative, markers, situations? Is that possible? Every time you create another perspective ! See previous point.

If we would like to share a document between our different practices and generate a common narrative, it is perhaps nice to share the document in one of the shards of the archipelago. This to avoid that we only have our individual practices floating there. And is there a possibility to add comments, a conversation?

Is it a good plan to mix all the different models in one archipelago: a practices with a document, a gesture, a narrative...)?

When creating an archipelago, what happens to the text columns?

We wonder if the void between the islands can make new narratives and relationships visible? Interesting to think about...

Mail Julie / AC 20230601

Dears,

We completed the doodle! Our agendas are filling up fast, so let's try and set a date soon?

The first prototype is online, here is the index page: https://jubilee.atelier-cartographique.be/index

During our last session, we discussed the need for shared definitions regarding the models that are used in the platform. Here is a first version based on the notes that document the code, that were written during our work sessions: https://jubilee.atelier-cartographique.be/models/ There is also a general diagram to show the existing relations in the database.

The idea was to work collectively on a pad to define and clarify what we mean for each model, and for its attributes. The link to the pad is included in the page.

Regarding the editing, and adding new elements to the platform, there is a dedicated space, called the admin. I created some accounts for those who were there on Tuesday. The user account allows you to edit and add elements in the admin ( https://jubilee.atelier-cartographique.be/admin ) For those who were not there, I feel like you would need an introduction to the editing side. The existing users can also add new users. It is worth thinking around the collective organisation behind the editing of the platform contents, and the shared definitions. We could work on this together next time we meet?

Finally, there were several questions that we asked, here there are again, as new answers might come up along the way. We will discuss those again during our next session.

What elements should become islands/shards ? For now, we have practices, gestures, traces, associated resources, markers and announcements.
What relations are we looking to make visible? What group of shards - archipelago - do we want to display? Here, a first answer that came up was to have the situation as an archipelago, as it is the place where gestures from different practice can meet.
(this is a question to answer after you added several elements to the platform) Is there something to be added in the models of the database?

Let us know if you have any questions,

See you soon, Julie

20221220 Workshop 03

AC has used our input in the modeling exercise to already start programming The visualisation on the programming is an A3 page with a series of tree structures, some of which are linked to each other with an arrowed line.

In today's workshop we go through the visuals and on that basis rework our modeling exercise. We discover overlaps, correct them and try to finetune the visual outcome in two working groups.

Basic explanation of the used terms: Classes (grey zone) / Characteristics (tree structure)

each class has a unique identifier id = (a number) two columns: left is name of the field / rigth type of data we should be filling in integer=full number varchart (100): chart with a number of variations. Ex: Trace varchar (8): sound, video,... 8 (charaters)

credits_id: bigint (big integer) needs to be relocated to 'trace' - you can own/author a point on a map point: actual coordinate on a map - geolocal

bool: yes or no / binary choice

After working in two groups we conclude that a number of classes have different names, but in fact refer to the same notions for both groups. We decide to go through them and eliminate half of them. We end up with less classes and decide together how to name them.

AC will adjust the programming to include our comments, limit the nuber of classes, rsulting in an adjustment of the visual output - treestrucutures

2022-12-20

Sharing of inspiration from Elena Biserna’s book: Going Out, Walking, Listening, Soundmaking.

The chapter on counter-mapping is very inspiring: Brief choice of elements:

Map as contradiction between god’s eye view and our embodied practices. Roman maps were long scrolls accounting for a long journey and the time spent. Aztec maps: account for histories, narratives, past and future The knowledge of a place is forged by the one making the map.

Walking is a relational practice, and mapping can be too: a relational view of space. Making critical, collective, personal maps.

Interview Justin Bennett: critiques maps used for sound walks; geolocalised dots that cannot account for the time of sounds or the walks. The map cannot represent time and movement. The sound walk is just a dot on a map. What you have is rather a geolocated archive of sounds recorded all over the world.

Libby Harward, an aboriginal artist talks about the aboriginal way of mapping and relating to the land. She talks about code-switching, the contrast between colonial way finding, mapping and governance and the aboriginel practices. It is about mapping and counter-mapping, looking at borders and place names of the 2 cultures. The aboriginal mapping takes place in sounds, dance, body paint and sand drawings and is ephemeral. Aboriginal laws and governance in contrast to western laws and governance. The land underneath the colonial concrete crust. Her work is about walking, mapping and continuous code-switching between the colonial city/land, laws and maps, and the embodied and relational aboriginal mapping and walking practices.

20221213 Projected Mapping Idea On 20221213 we did not have a workshop, but instead met with the partners to discuss the text that we want to write together. Justin Bennett had sent us two links with mapping practices. One defined a small part of Amsterdam as a project area. It was shaped as a triangle, and reminded me of one of the constituting elements of a situationist map that brings together different parts of different cities. These parts are then linked with each other using arrows that indicate the 'atmospheric flow' between the different parts. Max responded to this by showing us a map of Rome drawn by Piranesi Link to Piranesi maps: https://socks-studio.com/2018/11/04/forma-urbis-romae/

It was a mapping of Rome but visualised as broken parts of a marble floor that had different parts of the city drawn onto them. They are based on of

20221206 Workshop02: Modelling Location: Brussels, AC office in Ixelles Present: Ciel, Clementine, Julie, Katleen, Loes, Marien, Max, Pierre, Ronny, Sophie, and Pierre Marcon Excused: Scott, Anne, Sara Minutes: Ronny

1/Remarks about the previous workshop

Max asks clarification about the role of connection between docs and the role of the doc itself. He sees the docs as carriers of information, so quite important, but has the impression that the links between different documents are more important?

Katleen tries to clarify: It is clear there will be a great many documents. You spoke about a database of ovens... Question is what to include in the map: some docs will be integarated in the map, while others will be visible as links that appear on the side panel of the map.

Our motivation to highlight the relation between documents: they only get a surplus value if they concretise relations between the different partners. They become testimony of a dynamic, an agency that goes beyond one artist or organisation. It would be interesting if the docs that are integrated in the map show relationships between our practices. In that way the doc is part of and generates multiple narratives rather than just being a doc in a database with an accumulation of 'autonomous' docs. It becomes a 'relational' object.

A question that comes with this approach is if this would also apply to docs that come from other practices, outside of the partnership.

2/workshop#02 - Modelling

Julie Today we will start building some form of generalisation for the different objects, relations that together will make out the content offered in the mapping tool. The idea is that starting from the discussed imaginaries, these different objects, relations need to be 'located, characterized...' The interacting objects need structuring in order to be able to activate them afterwards

We suggest we split up in two groups: Each of the groups tries to define the objects that would appear on the map and define what would be useful for each object, as well as the relation between them.

In short you have to try to define: Objects / Relations / Characteristics and imagine them as dots / lines / polygones

Pierre Marchand expalains further: An information system is built with structured data Description / Properties will define different 'types of things'

AC will not do that for you, but with you. The idea is that we discuss the imagenaries you have in mind and from there together model them into different 'types of things' This is a very important exercise, because the structure that we will develop together will define the uture possibilities of the mapping tool.

We need to converge on a common language: Name + list of properties (words and numbers) Numbers can be pointeres to other objects - can start to generate links to other objects

Two groups: Ciel, Clementine, Max (Atlas of Ovens) – accompanied by Marine and Sophie Katleen and Ronny, Loes (7 Walks and Nadine) – accompanied by Julie

The exercise results in a series of A3 with tree structures.

After this initial exercise we regroup and both groups go through what was noted on the A3. The exercise turned out to be very useful for participants to not only better understand their own projects, but relate them to a map: what should go on the map. In a second instance it clarifies what our projects concretely share with each other. Names and properties allow different forms of overlap to become apparent.

All copies are scanned and will be shared. It is a first exercise that AC will digest to figure out in more detail where these overlaps are situated, and where project diverge from each other. Since this will take some time, AC suggests to postpone the workshop of 13/12. In addition and to make this exercise as concrete as possible AC asks the partners to upload digital samples of what each of us wants to have on the map (visual, sound, text), by 13/12 Links: 7-walks: https://cloud.atelier-cartographique.be/s/jEZryDS9g6K2iJL atlas of ovens: https://cloud.atelier-cartographique.be/s/HzWki2xAKZa2PbR nadine: https://cloud.atelier-cartographique.be/s/bCM9g5D3r3JnWQ3

AC: Here is the link: https://cloud.atelier-cartographique.be/s/Y2mPC7TrxLQprar

20221129 Workshop 01 "Federated/Distributed Map of Nomadic and Situated Practices" Location: Brussels, AC office in Ixelles Present: Marine, Sophie, Julie, Pierre, Ronny, Kathleen, Loes and Ciel Excused: Clementine, Max, Scott Minutes: Ciel

The potential kind of documents to be included: and trying to define priorities for the mapping tool, and what should stay at individual websites and being linked there, so not to create overlaps (see further) - 7 walks = practice of Vermeir&Heiremans exhibition: o Press articles o Pictures of events o Exhibition handout o scans of documents (that were part of the exhibition) o reference library (can be connected to 7walks and to one walk in particular) sound piece: per sonare : o discussions that take place during the walks o recording of a lecture/symposium o text and powerpoint sound (recorded narrative of the walk or in a symposium) video fragments or link to longer film narrative. - Kunst&Zwalm (ephemeral art pieces in village) = festival curated by Nadine o Poster/announcement o Map with all artworks to be visited during 3 weekends (to be paid by visitors) o Catalogue including a map and documentation for every artwork (after the festival, archival piece) - Buratinas = residency project of Nadine o Trajectories of this boat and documentation of research - Scores for exploring the city = many art projects of artists guided by Nadine the artists use 'protocols' that generate a map on the spot (include this in our map or not?) o Fixed starting point? - Atlas of Ovens = project by Clementine, Max and Ciel o An exhibition: ex. images of installation o A reading room: ex. report o A tour: ex. a report, a trajectory o A firing event: ex. a film

Reference of Ronny: molenechos.org > interesting that the map is not the central element, but crucial difference with the ovens that it is not about mapping all singular ovens, rather about showing the different compositions/categorisations we are designing.

Goal of the map: an archive AND an agenda/invitation: different for a guided tour (an announcement) and a tour done on your own (a printeable map)

Loes: can we export a map (pdf, GPS trajectory) that can be used for all our sit. projects? map as a pretext for encounter

Do we have to geolocate all documents? Ex. A lecture in an art school in Brussels about the project in SPA <> Lecture in Genk (during Emptor) about SPA.

Brussels is less important than Genk, because Genk links the project with the one of Ciel and Max. Ex. Lecture (elsewhere) about a historical figure that visited SPA, if this one is linked with a fountain in the centre or a stone there, it adds something. should the user of the website make this link or should the author (V&H) do this?

Suggestion of Sophie: maybe a void can be foreseen on the map in proximity of SPA in which these documents are “located”, so that there is a visual proximity. We talked about 'markers' and about 'journeys' on the map, and the creation of a legend with lists of markers and descriptions of journeys. When clocking on markers or journeys, texts and pictures can unfold, and a place for a link to further content (on websites) can be placed. (an app for a smartphone is not possible-you need to create something entirely different)

Ciel: on the place of source documents and the focus on relationships (see also text fragment in ethertoff for article): each partner has a practice (eg. atlas of ovens, 7 walks). A practice consists of different projects (defined in space and time) : eg. a bike tour, an exhibition, a festival Each project makes use of external sources, eg. a picture of an oven… Important question is how we deal with source documents. It is not about creating a double of our websites. It is not about storing our archive (all our source documents) in the map. All agree that the map should not be covering up with our general website. So the source, eg. oven picture/lecture, does not need a singular space, but we can link towards it on another website. (Internet only works with unidirectional links) The image of the oven in itself is not interesting, but the link between the two projects (ovens and spa) is the point of interest : so the image should be contextualised. The objects/pictures/narratives function as 'relational infrastructure' Why do we bring these practices into this map? - What we share is the fact that we have all nomadic and situated practices, so maybe we should limit other practices. > Geolocation may be a condition to take it in the map. -how to we show the different relationships and collaborations on the map, e.g. V&H doing a 7 Walks project with F.eks in Denmark. F.eks doing a project in Spa etc...is that shown in a second layer with connecting lines? (See also Tupaie map showing relationships) - Our nomadic and situated artistic practices also have something to reveal about a place (user perspective) - As partners, we want to highlight and enforce the relations that (can) exist between places and places, places and projects, projects and projects. and between partners and partners and practices and practices. Kathleen: Federated approach: how can these relations be of an added value for us (as partners)? Publicity/visibility of related projects (if you know V&H, can you get to know about Nadine?) How does the 'federated' map create agency for our practices, how does it generate visibility, publics, sharing of content and information, sharing a critical approach for all partners involved? E.G. an announcement can be shared by all of us via the map. This is the reason for the mapping tool to exist: it should create an agency that goes beyond an individual websites, individual newsletters and beyond announcements on social media that can be shared among more people. On the map you can highight different relationships/activate immaterial practices... Do we 'show' the conversations we have with each other? How does it 'involve' the public, reader of the map?

All markers should always be visible: the shared map is always the underlayer, so no seperate maps for each partner. Ex. if you want to focus on Nadine’s Kunst&Zwalm, an oven project in Zwalm (unrelated to Nadine’s festival) should be visible. All these connections need to be made visible, active, federated... what would be needed for that in terms of which information you upload. Danger: to become self-referenced, so needs to be open to a audience, or new users. Reflect on how we can be related? Does not always need to go through a document. It can create agency for the partners, but it might create a new enclosure/dark infrastructure/something enigmatic in the process. How to create a 'commons' with clear rules of use, content, access?

Marine used this title: "Federated map of nomadic and situated practices" R&V: Federated is a very interesting term, but difficult. What does it mean exactly for us? Maybe "distributed" (reference: disco's) is a better word?

Who do we accept as partner? Guy Gypens (Kanal museum, head of performance arts, former Kaaitheatre director) was refused by Ronny to be part of the “developpers” group, because there would be an imbalance. Once it is developed, this kind of partners are of course interesting to consider. Similar for Z33 or Bruges Biennial in relation to Kunst in Zwalm.

Marine: Entrance page: not only the geo-map but also a “walburg map” showing other kind of relations. Pierre: this is a difficult exercise: exploded view of documents in order to have not too many overlaps. Ciel: maybe tags are a starting point: #public space, #property, … ?

Next week: workshop about markers

Text Techniques: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/LTSF::LTSF_articleTechniques.md R&K will ask a delay. Seminar "Education of the Senses" with Tyson Lewis in KuLeuven, V&H invited to present: maybe this article can be the topic? General and historical introduction to the “dark infrastructure” of map making: - Colonial implications of Mercator projection. the critical approach of the anarchists towards mercator and 2D mapping (see Proudhon, Elisee Reclus as anarchist geographer, and their approach to situated knowledge-the map of the territory made in clay, before looking at a 2D map.) - Tupaia map as very interesting case: combining two kind of mapping logics, putting the boat central, relationships are drawn…use of situated knowledge for wayfinding and mapping, like journeys of fish and birds, the constellation of stars and planets. What do we want to avoid? - Decontextualization > situatedness of practices > also situatedness of sources - Traceability > idea of incompleteness and continuous evolution should be visible

map as a vehicle for our own projects AND for our collaborations (federated approach)
map to show the relationships between objects, narratives, journeys, and partnerships
map to create more agency for our immaterial pratcices
how not to create enclosures/dark infrastructures and openness to new practices, 
but with acknowledging the work already done on the basic infrastructure
and the invisible work to maintain it...( a commons with clear rules of use and access?)
map a a 'relational contract'.

20221115
Meeting LTSF Invited: all Present: Pierre, Marine, Max, Ciel, Ronny, Katleen, Loes Excused: Clementine, Scott, Anne, Sara

Minutes: Ronny See: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/LTSF::LTSF-mapping.md

1/Quote and Program AC had sent us an update of the quote, integrating a series of 10 workshops, and a proposal for a working program, including days dedicated to workshops, development and design, and in final stage finetuning and testing. The timeframe would be between end of November and end of February.

Pierre proposes to meet live in the office for these workshops. From experience that works better. The workshops can be hybrid, providing online presence for thse who can't make it and for the non-Belgian participants. Not ideal but no other solution. In between meetings we can discuss more with Scott, Anne and Sara, to share all knowledge produced during the workshops. The meetings can be time efficient, so today maybe a bit shorter, to have more time together later.

In response to the initial dates proposes: weekly meetings would be better.

We've scheduled meetings on Tuesdays: 29 Nov 06 Dec 13 Dec 20 Dec

There was some discussion about the hours... Maybe most convenient would be 13:30 till 16 or 17h ?

That way we can work through the Finding Out part of the project.

The last workshop should schedule time for conclusions. Based on those written conclusions AC can then work on design and development of the mapping tool. Less consultation with all of us is necessary at that point, but we think it would still be good, to touch base a couple of times during the design and development phase. This can be taken up by a smaller group of us, to be shared with all...

Once the mapping tool has been developed there would again be a series of workshops, to finetune the prototype tool, and learn to work with it. We all agree on this planning.

2/Timeframe We also try to set a launching date for the tool. Workperiod is currently scheduled between November and February. There are two deadline moments:

a/article Techniques: deadline printable text 31/12/2022 Timing in view of the work of the designers and the commentators, who will read the contributions and write comments on the texts.

b/online version is scheduled for March Does the quote foresee integration of the map in the online Techniques publication. We're sending a mail to the editor to get us in touch with the designers of the magazine. Can be a primitive version, but it needs to be the proper link.

Publishing a map online will bring its own series of practical issues that AC needs to deal with. That's why they keep a number of dates open, to deal with these complex problems.

About the quote. Discount? AC sees it as their contribution to the project, but in view of the subsidy 'discount' is how it needs to be formulated. AC prefers that they also will be considered a partner in the project. If AC feels to be merely a provider of a service, then we need to discuss this, because of course all partners would prefer AC to be deeply engaged in this project both on a content as well as technical level.

V&H will share the full budget of their LTSF project. Remark: it is only partially dedicated to the mapping tool. We will take care of payment to AC. Contributions of the partners will be invoiced through Jubilee. Amounts differ between artists (2000,-) and institutions (3000,-). We thought this reflects the limited access to financial resources. It is a project budget written for an application, so made under a short time frame. This can still be discussed in view of the total amount needed. Nadine has made this project part of their budget 2023. Max also ok. It is part of their budget of the Flemish Community, Atlas of Ovens, which is managed by a non profit Heisa.

3/Programme of today Go through the briefing and try to define priorities.

Topics for the workshops were conceived in a way to clarify for AC as well as for the partners what the mapping tool could generate, how that would work, and how it would look. All of that needs to become clear from a workshop-based practice.

1/Inventory of materials: map as an archival tool AC would need to have a view on which materials we will want to bring into the map. For the meeting of 29/11 we agreed that each of us would print out some samples of information that they imagine being uploaded on the map. For AC this will help clarify our different practices, and our our diverse needs from concrete materials. It would allow to regroup the materials that have certain things in common, and how they can be connected to the map. In short it would work more precisely than working with abstract information. Still we need to be careful not to loose ourselves in details that are not important in this initial stage...

2/Visual identity: map as a publishing tool In a second phase we can look at how things can look, a visual identity. This would be limited to the possibilities that are offered by a series of built-in tools. At the same time different users need to be identifiable, so it is clearly a two-sided issue: possibility to connect and differentiate between projects will be an exercise in balance. In that way the mapping tool opens up possible readings that go beyond the individual contributions, yet it does not deny thes singularity of contributions. The mapping tool we have in mind balances between contributing to a common layer, and filling out a specific project layer. A choice to share or not, and the level of sharing...

How to differentiate? Can be a kind of stamp? All these markers We used the word 'marker' to distinguish the different contributions. Practices have their identity but they also interconnect.

Loes agrees very much. Sometimes we're host, sometimes creator of walks. How to integrate these in one mapping tool.

Interaction between all agents that use the same page – mapmaking is a kind of agency, it highlights how our practices work, no exhibition, very immaterial. The map can help to give visibility, agency.

Different relationships how to make these explicit, because not all relationships are the same. How to make them tangible, capture their nuaces into this tool?

3/Hyperlink between different documents Ciel: ex. different ovens and how to connect these ovens Rethink it a bit – not all objects are geolocalized. Others objects from past or present contextualize them. Connecting two, three places, in that way we can create a story. Feeding the narrative is a layer of document – not geolocalized – that we put on top of that. Cfr. Wikipedia, clickable hightlight that takes you to another page. These are connected with a hyperlink. Difference between marker (=on the map) and hyperlink (not on the map). Markers on the map activate certain documents that are in the archive. Hyperlinks interconnect to documents in the archive, or outside of the archive? The relation between these can be developed further.

4/Drawing Pierre has been drawing to try to split up basic elements. Goal of workshops is to identify different layers and elements to visualize what is in front of us.

The meeting elaborates on the reading of his drawing. Defining the base map will be the biggest challenge.

How will histories of different walks remain visible? They can be saved as a complete entity that can be revisited?

Connections with AC is stopped because of technical issues. The meeting continues for another 20'.

4/text Techniques Problem is that the conditions of production of the text do not align with the way in which we are currently working. One person holding the pen to write a text and the rest of us reading and approving or disapproving, is contradictory to what we are doing.

Although deadline is close we will still try to develop some form of collective writing. With a proper methodology this short delay might still be manageable. We could e.g. formulate a number of questions that can be addressed in context of each workshop. How can the map embody the way we work together, how does it function as a relational infrastructure, how can it generate a form of collective practice.

We agree to initiate a parallel document that would bring together ideas for the Techniques text. These excerpts can come from the reporting doc. or other texts that inspire you. All can contribute. It may be messy in the beginning, but it will filter itself out. Intention is to be all authors on the same level.

We will get in touch with the editors asap to give an update and maybe ask for a bit more time...

The parallel doc: https://ethertoff.caveat.be/w/LTSF::LTSF_articleTechniques.md

5/Relational Agreement In Jubilee we have worked in Caveat on a relational agreement. Although Julie van Elslande is in her last month of employment with Jubilee, I still would like to go into this type of agreement in context of this project. Normally we would design this before, and include it in the application, but there was not time to do that. Let's see if we can work on it now, in parallel to what we are doing for TRACKS, an app for sound walks that Jubilee has developed in collaboration with QO2, Overtoon, BBOT/BNA, Beursschouwburg en SoundTrackCity.

Can also be important to define future users; to define the project in its most open form. We should also discuss this with AC. Reference to online form of collaboration: https://disco.coop/manifesto/

6/LTSF It is of course a reference to our walking project in Bxl. We think it is best to give another name to the mapping project per se. This is also important with regard to the exhibition with Nadine we (V&H) are preparing for early autumn next year (21/09 - 15/10/2023). We should discuss which 'collective' narrative can be developed/included in this exhibition because we would like to present to mapping tool in the exhibit. Maybe we should differentiate this moment from an official launching moment: to be defined.

END

20221106 Draft briefing AC

Using one mapping tool together, it is key that we boil down our different needs/desiers to a number that can work out for all the mapmakers around the table: shared needs (see below) In that way it does not really matter how many different people/organisations would use the tool, except for the level of learning how to use the tool. Learning would be through a series of workshops that AC would set up with us. Developing a better view on these needs/desires can be the goal of a series of initial workshops...Also useful into developing a shared language.

SHARED NEEDS - PROPOSAL

From the perspective of the mapmaker: how to bring practical considerations and 'content' together

1/the map is an archival and publishing tool: -we can put visual markers on the map - regular updates (for announcing, communication, as well as archiving projects, and able to show a process)

-visual markers are clickable and activate different types of information: visuals (still & moving), sound and text: Q: do they open on another tab, and leave the map, or is the information part of the map?

-how can markers be connected so that they generate a narrative: the map as a storytelling device that can narrate not only place and distance, but also relations, histories, agency, empiral approaches and can share knowledges with each other and public)

-hyperlink between the different documents: marker = map / hyperlink not on the map

-able to print for publication, for paper archiving...

2/each user can create his own visual identity in the map -although within a limited number of options

-using built in tools

3/the map can link or keep separate the information and use by the different partners but there is also a 'shared space': -that makes our interconnectedness visible, and our collaborations, and communications with each other. (create relational infrastructure and more agency for our ephemeral practices/ the map as a tool for federation or as a platform. A mapping project that adds value to our transdisciplinary projects: we are all working mostly in public space, we give most value to processes, we want to accomodate a wide variety and range of people, places, things, archives...

-In this way a map can become a critical tool, thinking about representations, creating agency countering dark infrastructures and (power) relations... (see also our inspiration in anarchist geography and Tupaia's map)

-individual or collective projects that might overlap on the same spot on the map should be easily differentiated/and be able to connect.

-Are different layers possible? And can they be controlled?

-not all documents are geo-locateble: option for a digital whiteboard?

4/easy access and to maintain -Easy ways to find documents via navigation tool?

future maintenance ?

From the perspective of the audience:

1/the map includes toponymy and can be used as an orientation device

2/itineraries are downloadable

3/the map has a clear legend

20221021 Meeting Notes

Invited: Ciel, Clementine, Katleen, Loes, Marine, Max, Pierre, Ronny, Scott, Excused: Anne, Sara

Welcome. Agenda: -Introduction -Boil down all our briefings to one briefing for AC - who will join at 11am

after AC -Working method -Reporting/recording -Discussion as a basis for article? -Financing this project: how can a partnership like this operate?

Introduction Before we start we let you know that Danielle who was curating the Piloot project has decided to not join this project. The Piloot project is rounding up, and it would have been a nice way to do that by integrating the extensive programme they have done in past couple of years...

Also Anne and Sara of Skal Contemporary are not with us (finishing an application) - Scott will brief them.

Brief introduction of everybody -Ciel, Clementine, Max introduce their project Atlas of ovens - artists not an organisation but a punctual gathering around one project

-Scott introduces f.eks

-Loes introduces nadine

-Ronny&Katleen introduce V&H

1/context and what came before...:

Why is mapping interesting content wise ? apart from our practical needs we also would like to discuss mapping as practice relation to Techniques Journal - dark infrastructure > data extraction / surveillance how can the mapping tool become a relational infrastructure ?

First inspiration for V&H was the figure of Elysée Réclus - anarchist mapping: 2D maps are misrepresentation of reality

Réclus' approach is a form of decolonising mapping We tried to connect to some of his ideas in the summer school on Laeso. His was an empirical approach: it is better to first go into the landscape, head for the river closest by. Then gather clay in the river, model the landscape, understand it with your hands and then go to an abstraction of the landscape which was in his case a globe.

Second inspiration was the figure of Tupaia The Tupaia map as an inspiration revolves around a different perspective on mapping (see articles that were shared - see below) It embodies a clash of representation between Polynesian (empirical knowledge) and the western (abstract) approach how to include a history in the map - ex. maps that detail the history of the colonials arriving, like a diary not only about distances, orientation etc. but also on events

Concluding: Why is mapping interesting content wise ?

The map should work on two levels: it needs to be practical - but also needs to have meta-level as well.

Why mapping? Some ideas that came up...

1/ tool for sharing & activating knowledge and narratives

2/ capture the nomadic / performative

3/ art / architecture / public space / social practice / ecology

4/ connecting different communities

5/ publishing opportunity / documents & narratives : immediately open to show the process

6/ tool for archiving

7/ layered structure / overlap / connections

8/ added value / interconnectedness

2/We read the briefings from 20221012 below. Comment and elaboration are added in in the text in italic/underlined.

3/AC joins the meeting

a/ Introduction

see also the AC presentation that was sent round via mail

Via screen share AC presents cartostation and its atlas of maps. https://cartostation.com/documentation/en/index, a web application platform offering tools for managing, visualizing and publishing spatial data that is currently being used by administrations of the Brussels-Capital Region (Bruxelles Environnement and Perspective.Brussels) under the name Geodata. (geodata.environnement.brussels). Environment Brussels is very strict on author rights. This system was built with public money in a mutual effort between different departments to develop and design a shared mapping tool. All of its code is published under free licence

From this AC has developed https://cartofixer.be/ : a blanc version intended for civic basic needs.

Cartofixer is primarily aimed at civic, social, artistic and activist initiatives. Cartofixer takes the form of a series of technological tools that are activated in collective social moments (workshops) intended to support the implementation of observation campaigns, the collection of data, their visualization, and the publication of maps. Through these devices, cartofixer encourages the creation of common, specific, situated knowledge, by and for the subjects concerned by the spatial/territorial issues that are discussed during the collection, during the creation of maps, and during their publication.

Two tools specifically are of interest for the current project: Studio allows you to create and publish maps from available data. Studio can also be a place for questioning data, reinterpreting institutional data, a place where the legend and description of the map is defined, what is it called, what do we decide to make visible. The map can be linked to other pre-existing maps, and enriched with images, text, and other metadata. Maps published in the Studio are available in the Atlas.

Atlas makes it possible to view and share the maps of the platform, created in Studio. Atlas is a place where maps are pooled, a place where imaginations, projects and problems are confronted. Thanks to markers and linked maps, Atlas allows you to navigate from one map to another. Each map of the Atlas offers the possibility of delving into the data that compose it. Finally, the Atlas allows the distribution of maps, via web integration or pdf export for printing.

b/ about the partnership AC made a quote for the project of Ronny & Katleen, not for all partners around the table there is an issue of work load and budget that needs to be discussed

we inform AC that we will come to a clear unified briefing. it is not the idea to develop 5 different mapping projects

We (K&R) understood that the mapping system already existed; and that AC is the owner of that system.

AC Technically it is open source; so another designer could do the work with you. This does not happen because the documentation about the system is missing - AC wants this but there is no budget for that. So indeed in principle the system is open, it has been paid with public money.

In practice AC opens it by taking the time to understand specific needs/desires of people/groups that want to use the mapping tool. We would not be using the official map of Bxl region, but f.e. use open street map, or a blank map (geo-referenced) with only a part of world... To be specified

c/ Questions

Q Ciel: blank map - still visualized in geographical way?

AC The space of the blank map is georeferenced

Q Max Connections between the dots on the map? Possible? And as such change the information the dots contain...

AC we use 4 different types of markers: dots (points), lines (non-closed shapes), polygons (closed shapes) and the relations between the three shapes; these are the basic atoms of GIS (geographical information system)

link between two points: there are two options a line between two points (geo-referenced), or a visual shape connecting two points this would need to be developed - but it does not look like this would be a problem

But how does the information change when you link or do not link them: a visualisation of the relationship

M They are starting to tell a story: info is the relationship, and the line is the visualisation of that relationship

R If this is developed as part of the tool, is it then usable for all partners on every location on the map? You only need to develop it once?

AC Yes, but the relationship itself needs to be qualified: The tool is generic, but all information linked to a project is specific.

R To what extend does it then need mediation by AC? Ex Max: The narrative exists in the mind of the reader. The link is the representation of the narrative; the elements of the narrative are hidden under a specific point. Linking the three points builds the narrative; the connections between the dots is specific

AC AC will provide a way for partners to do this yourselves. Again choices to be made: we can simplify the editing tool and focus on the visualisation We need to balance between what will be visible, and the editing possibilities

Workshops are the learning moments on the mapping tool

But before that we need to find the best and most economic way We need to learn from your project

K We need to boil down desires/needs How much is overlapping between us - that would be the final briefing for AC

Max How to boil down different sets of needs. Can we do a workshop on that?

K First our priorities Then question the economy of these needs

R Create a hierarchy of shared and singular needs Then reevaluate the list with AC - in view of price / work needed! That's maybe a way forward... Expanded mission is by shere necessity Mapping is not necessary about a dark infrastruture - but rather about how to build relationships that allows for this to happen

K Waend map? Still on the table? Why not mentioned today

AC It is there, but we know it is a very demanding tool - mainly for you Cartofixer: you enter into a kitchen; there are the tools and the ingredients to cook a meal

Waend: there is not even a ktichen

It is a tool that takes a lot more time... is more poetic But Cartofixer can be applied to Waend; which would make it more feasable Waend is also not clickable at this point - interaction with audience is currently not possible

R Difference between media artists and us who work more on a conceptual approach Working on code is not what makes our clock tick, but we do see the potential of a mappig tool from our point of view More social political interest - although the technicality is defining this concretely

AC for us it is less disconnected, you're really close, but still a small jump missing

d/ the QUOTE it references a limited form of tweeking/adaptation of the existing mapping tool.

graphic design: how it looks - 14 days development: program how its IT operates - 14 days coordination: in fact workshops, to work with all partners - 7 days

Depending on the specific needs we could deminish or inflate one of these three fields Inflating the number of days that we work together would be AC's preferred way of working It's a concern of AC that we can actually use the mapping - this involves learning.

A Map: it is a simple name, but mapping systems, are actually a very complex objects. At the start it is not a technical but a cultural/political object - that's why AC is interested in it. It takes a lot of time... to understand what we're dealing with, and we're only at the beginning of possibilities...

e/ the BUDGET it is a hybrid government subsidy and partnership (co-production) budget that originated from an understanding that all different agents involved in this projet work form a different socio-economic environment designers, artists, institutions, academia. how can we work together on this? an infrastructural question?

f/ Wrapping up: a proposal

-make/unify the hierarchy of needs/desires list -check with AC on the amount of work/budget and adapt the list

-we can do this working from an abstract case (based on the list on top of the page): ex. can we organise a couple of workshops on an abstract case that can help us decide on the list of needs/desires ?

-after this 'finding out' phase AC could work on implementing the choices made in a test model

-that test model could then be the subject of more workshops to finetune/adapt the test model

20221012 LEARNING THROUGH THE SOLES OF OUR FEET - FIRST BRIEFING

Developing a mapping tool is a collaborative endeavour between different artistic practices, some more from a curatorial perpspective other from an artistic perspective; some organised in small self-run organisations others organised as a temporary project-based connection between a number of individual practitioners.

Partners are: Atlas of Ovens (Clementine Vaultier/Ciel Grommen/Maximiliaan Royakkers) f.eks nadine Piloot Skal Contemporary Vermeir & Heiremans

All in all a complex partnership in which each member to a certain extent has different expectations, desires or needs with regard to a mapping tool.

As a first step in the direction of developing such a tool we have brought together each partner's wish list, as a first briefing for Atelier Cartographique to better understand what kind of tool needs to be developed. There is clearly overlap between the different lists, but rather than unifying them, maybe it best to run through all items together next Friday between 10 and 12. At that point we can start making a more concise list based on the initial reflections of AC on what is possible, in view of the budget on the table.

1/ATLAS OF OVENS (Max, Ciel & Clementine) Clementine Vaultier: vaultier.clementine@gmail.com Ciel Grommen: cielgrommen@hotmail.com Maximiliaan Royakkers: maximiliaan.royakkers@gmail.com https://clementinevaultier.com/atlas-of-ovens https://cielgrommen.com/Le-Paysage-Menage https://caveat.be/notes/aop-1.html

-The map is for us a way to present our research and develop it further. So it is a format in which we can show different ways of looking at the bulk of documents of our atlas of ovens.

process working document to develop narratives - try these out on the map still in the beginning - data will be developed learning by doing and published directly showing a process data unorganised for the moment; the map can help us organise the mess it can function as a story telling device as well as a tool that traces a line

We think about the storage of 2 kind of "documents":
1. Objects (raw documents): eg. an image, a short series of drawings, a copy from a book, ... with a small caption/footnote/description, and a source. Eg. "Image of the Warmbed, a public sculpture built by Ciel Grommen&Maximiliaan Royakkers..., Image by Stef Renard. Eg. "Drawing : the way fire travels in a Batch Rocket Stove, drawn by Peter Van Den Berg Eg. "Excerpts of a discussion on the warmbed with guest xxx, about xxx " These are not geolocalised. We will never be able to geolocalise them all.

not all is geolocalised
all documents around the warmbed ex drawings are not geolocalised only the warmbed is geolocalised, not documents developd around the warmbed

how can sources speak? storytelling who is speaking - the narrator perspective // reference to the Loire project and project on the Sambre/Charleroi - both about giving legal personhood to a non-human, in casu a river. what we're missing is: the river does not speak, it is people, researchers... how to give independance to the docs? a system in which the docs speak for themselves, generate narratives by interconnecting them use/activate them when doing visits - to make connections and form narratives organize them in a way they make the story - hashtag the docs link to a certain visit that connects them (tags) docs can be reused in different locations so that the map becomes an organising tool, a narrator

HOW CAN THE MAP ACTIVATE LINKS BETWEEN DIFFERENT DOTS? AND DO THIS IN MORE THAN ONE WAY? THE MAP AS A GENERATOR OF MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVE NARRATIVES.

reciprocal relation: a reflection on 7 Walks documents in the museum in Spa (cabinet de lecture - discursive context of the museum) are activated through the walks we do in public space, and at the same time our walks pull the patrimony in public space into the discursive context of the museum; we extend the museum into public space and install a reciprocal relation between inside and outside of the museum, simply by walking triangulation the walks generate a spatial form, bringing the immaterial heritage into the contemporary we time-travel by bringing in a guest and going into discussing contemporary issues during the walk, in an open dialogue with audience, guest (historical & contemporary) and us; so at the same time they are also a form in time, in the contemporary as well as historical. the mapping tool can visualize that and be a form that can be activated: accessibility for the user/audience; all audiences of practices using the mapping tool are connected through our different inputs

They would be embedded in stories :

2. Narratives, projects, curated things, assembling/linking a selection of the former objects which forms a hot point or a journey : 
    eg. "Le Paysage Ménagé" (collecting 4 documents: brick clamp, warmbed, chauffeuse... 
    eg. "Jolimont", 
    eg. "Bustour: from mine to mine",  
    eg."Emptor: assembly of practices: what is property" ...  
    eg. "Spa: Walk 1... "
    they could create links with others maps / narratives if a object of interest is shared ?

    They can have different forms (a text, a drawing, a digital whiteboard...)  and graphic designs (different fonts?) chosen by the authors/artists that made them. Hashtagged and geolocalised around at least one experienced localisation (a place or a trace).

We hope that it will have a readable navigation page (the map?), so that visitors are quickly able to consult/find these different "documents".
We hope that it will be easy to hyperlink between the different documents.

2/f.eks (Scott & Rikke) Scott William Raby: scott.raby@gmail.com https://f-x.dk/

-Since most of the artwork and projects we do are quite conceptual, critical, abstract, and challenge our audience and viewers, it seems important that any mapping tool - has a nice visualization, or dynamic visuality or unique visuality in how it presents these practices to bring different audiences into the work in a new way.

-Furthermore, it is important that any visualizing or mapping process also doesn't lose detail, context, conversation, or discussion in making it accessible, so there should be a good balance between making things more accessible, but still visualizing them in a way that upholds the integrity of the projects.

-With the projects f.eks. makes that "map" many different contexts, items, communities, neighborhoods, buildings, ecologies, processes, groups, etc. and so on - we would like a tool that could accomodate for a wide range of people, places, and things, etc.to be mapped

-Since we often work in the same locations, it is important that maps, or guides that overlap can be easily differentiated from each other.

projects can interconnect and differentiate: both are important

-It is nice to see all of the projects we've done as a platform, but also have easy access to other venue's projects, and see them in relation and counterdistinction from each other.

-It would be nice that the mapping tool adds a different or extra value to the projects and their documentaiton beyond more conventional web tools - websites, IG, etc.

-It is important it can also accomodate different types of media and documentation - e.g. video, sound, interviews, photos, text, ephemera, etc. etc.

-Crucial it can be easily accessible on a smart phone/tablet/mobile device, but also nice on a full screen for presentation purposes.



practical issues and question of visual identity of different partners?
how the map looks or the projects? in short design aspect is important
practical perspective: what tools do we already use to communciate to our public?
social media, website, press, ephemera 
it needs to accomodate audio video photo text - in a way not only addressed to location but also to time, category

new infrastructure
help produce a new infrastructure for ephemeral practices and to create more agency for them
visualisation of the practices - Rikke (photos) very important
new infrastructure in the arts for f.eks type of practices - how can the mapping tool help in this generating a more critical risky programming, publishing, visualisation...
not only visual identity but rather more agency for ephemeral practices

is Jubilee a partner?
its future is not defined at this point
it is also a choice to not involve Jubilee at this point - there is no need

public event around the launch for us and the audience make a public event around this across different countries helps Scott to fund raise invitation for Learning Through the Soles of our Feet

3/NADINE Loes Jacobs: loes@nadine.be https://index.nadine.be/

As we work a lot in public space, nadine could use a cartography tool that is versatile and easy to use.

We mostly use maps to communicate with an audience, i.e. to direct public to certain locations or to follow a specific parcours. It would be great to have a tool that we can use on a longer term (instead of always making different maps ourselves). The communication mostly uses text, visuals and QR codes that are added to maps. Eventually print maps for communication or distribution purposes and/or publish later in publications.

easy use access for people wtih different skills easy in use and construction both for audience and for us orientation tool printrable / publish - question in Techniques Journal? probably not finished, but the conversation and process can be published publish the maps through the app Tracks

One step further would be to have a tool that can archive those practices happening on specific locations. Perhaps a layering structure of different projects on a map that on a longer term shows where people have been active would be very interesting.

As we work with different people on various projects, it would be good if this tool would have an easy interface to access/create/print maps. Adding projects to the map for archiving purposes, drawing out trajectories for walks or travels, etc.

Next to the more active use of the tool, it might nice to think of an audience that wants to browse through the map(s).

readable navigation page

Next to these quite practical wishes, I think it would be great to use this tool as a platform that also publishes the conversations we are having. Sharing our different uses of cartography and what the challenges are.

the polynesian version

Danielle just let us know that in the end she will not join the project... PILOOT Danielle van Zuylen: daniellevz@gmail.com http://piloot.co/ PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zlew5d3eosbllc9/220630_Piloot_pdf%20publicatie.pdf?dl=0

we are very interested in how you are creating an additional public dimension through the development of a cartogaphic tool.
Our involvement in your project helps us to actively reflect on our own 'cartography'.
We also expect the tool to be useful and inspiring for making PILOOT's activities publicly available (which now consists of a growing pdf of projects on location)
By becoming a partner in this project, we not only support your practice, but also co-invest in developing a platform to better unlock projects on location.

SKAL CONTEMPORARY https://www.skalcontemporary.dk/21/ Anne Møller Christensen: anne@skalcontemporary.dk Sara Løvschall Grøntved: sara@skalcontemporary.dk

V&H Katleen Vermeir: katleen25@hotmail.com Ronny Heiremans: ronn62@hotmail.com

use: who can use it?

-since we do not have many IT skills, nor have funding to hire on a regular basis somebody with those skill to do this kind of work the mapping tool should be very user-friendly for us who will use it to upload information... -it also needs to be user-friendly for the public who will use the map to consume information passively (reading) and actively (walking).

-maintenance and future use: costs for that should be as limited as possible; we can discuss an annual fee for basic maintenance but apart from that the tool needs a solid basis that garantees faultless use for x number of years. what can we reasonably expect here?

-where is the map stored? who has access? who can add info?

performance: what it needs to be able to do?

1/for us the map is an archival and publishing tool: -we imagine to integrate visual markers in the map - regular updates -these visual marker bring the user to different types of information: visuals (still & moving), sound and text

2/each user can create his own visual identity in the map - although within a limited number of options

3/on a practical level: the tool needs to be able to link or keep separate the information and use by the different partners: all layers can be controlled seperately

4/interconnectedness: in case two layers are both visible, an extra layer should be added that allows to deeper explore the the relation between the two partners. It is important that the mapping tool does not become a collection of singular isolated practices that have no connections, but rather that a 'shared space' is also visualized...: lines/metadata that become visible.

5/include toponymy and allow downloadable itineraries

6/a legend to the map

inspiration: the tupaia map - see text with highlights attached or: https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/iaa-alc/tupaias-map.html#c455961 For us there are three issues that inspired us: meeting of different systems of representation (mercator & polynesian); adding meta narratives (different meetings integrated in the map); cano as a central fix point with all things surrounding it as mobile. Enjoy.

future users / contributors how to deal with that? ex. Samber project management but also it raises the question what this partnership is about... future care where is it stored who is the owner can/should we join the AR cooperative?

INSPIRATION: TUPAIA'S MAP (all maps are hyperlinks) [Who, then, was Tupaia?] Who, then, was Tupaia? Tupaia was an arioi priest from a Ra‘iātean family of master navigators in the Society Islands, born around 1725 and trained at Taputapu-ateamarae, the most important center for sacred knowledge and navigational learning in eastern Oceania. The marae would have preserved the oral legends and sailing instructions from Polynesian exploration voyages of the past 800 years which extended as far as to Hawai‘i in the North, Aotearoa/New Zealand in the South and Rapa Nui in the East. Around 1760, Ra‘iātea was invaded by warriors from the neighboring island of Porapora, and Tupaia had to flee to Tahiti, where he soon became a man of social standing. When the first Europeans, Captain Wallis and the crew of the Dolphin, set foot on Tahiti in 1767, Tupaia acted as chief diplomat. And two years later, after Captain James Cook spent three months in Tahiti on his first circumnavigation of the globe, Tupaia decided to join the crew of the Endeavour on their return voyage to Europe.

That Cook respected and trusted Tupaia is evidenced by the fact that for an entire month, he let Tupaia navigate his precious ship through the archipelago of the Society Islands, and on southward across open waters to Rurutu in the Austral Group. Tupaia turned out to be an invaluable linguistic and cultural translator for the crew, especially so in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where Cook landed next. Only when the Endeavour reached Australia did Tupaia’s powers to communicate fail; he eventually fell ill and tragically died in Batavia, today’s Jakarta in Indonesia.

When Cook and his crew first met Tupaia, their geographical knowledge of the South Pacific was very limited. On Tahiti, however, Tupaia shared with Cook and the ship master, Robert Molyneux, extended narratives of islands, both near and remote: Cook remarks that “he at one time gave us an Account of near 130” (1955, 293-94). It is easy to imagine how excited the Europeans must have been about all these islands, and how keen they were to learn their exact location. Cook, Molyneux, and Molyneux’s mate, Richard Pickersgill, must therefore have convinced Tupaia to embark on a joint project: A chart of the Pacific Ocean in which Tupaia could locate all the islands he claimed he knew.

Fig. 9.1: “Copy of a Chart made by […] Tupaïa” by Georg Forster, 1776, Stadtarchiv Braunschweig, H III 16–87.

Unfortunately, none of the original draft versions of the chart drawn “by Tupaia’s own hands” (1955, 293), as Cook insists in his diaries, have survived. But two quite different copies are still available in the archives. From this we can reconstruct that the map initially evolved in two stages.  The first stage resulted in a first draft containing 58 islands. As it was incomplete and later revised in a second draft, a junior officer, Richard Pickersgill was allowed to keep it. Pickersgill later took the map along on Cook’s second voyage to the Pacific on the Resolution (1772-1775), where he served as third lieutenant. There, he lent it to the German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg. Georg Forster eventually included a copy (with slightly changed island names) of Tupaia’s first draft map in a letter to his publisher in 1776, which is today archived in the city archive of Braunschweig (Fig. 9.1).

After the first draft was abandoned, Tupaia and his European collaborators started a new draft, presumably as part of the same drawing process in August 1769. Tupaia adjusted and corrected some elements, but basically took over all islands from the first draft, and added more (showing altogether 74). This map was kept by James Cook, who extensively describes it in his diaries. From archival evidence we cannot discuss here, it can be reconstructed that the second draft of Tupaia’s Map lay dormant in Cook’s papers for almost half a year, but that he worked with it again in the context of encounters with Māori people in Queen Charlotte Sound (Tōtaranui) in Aotearoa/New Zealand, in late January and early February 1770.

It is in this context also that the map was revised once more: The most significant addition at this third stage are annotations set down in Tahitian for five islands, which result from discussions between Tupaia, a local Māori chief called Topaa in European records, and Cook and his men. A major actor in this final draft stage must have been Cook’s famous naturalist on the first voyage, the gentleman scientist Joseph Banks. While the original draft drawn by Tupaia is again lost, Banks commissioned a fair copy of the third and final draft for himself. This copy survived in Banks’s papers in the British Museum in London(Fig. 9.2).

[The history of Tupaia’s Map] The history of Tupaia’s Map, and the reconstruction of what it actually depicts, is extremely complex, and can only be puzzled together from a whole range of historical sources involving more charts, journal entries of diverse voyagers, records of island lists, and not least written and oral accounts of precolonial Oceanic wayfinding techniques and practices. Readers interested in the long story of Tupaia’s Map are invited to read the detailed, step-by-step reconstruction of when, by whom, how, and in which order it was drawn, and which knowledges exactly where contributed by Tupaia, Māori people and European collaborators in a book-length essay by Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz (2019). What we can offer here is only a very short account of the ways in which Tupaia devised his map.

For almost 250 years, Tupaia’s Map posed a riddle to historians, anthropologists and geographers of the Pacific alike. Until more recently, only a rather small number of islands on the map could be reliably identified. The British on Cook’s ship knew little Tahitian, and their linguistic talent was limited. They wrote down what they heard Tupaia say when he named the islands he drew, in an often very corrupted English transcription. What is more, many of the Tahitian island names are no longer in use in the region. But the more foundational problem is that even those islands which could be identified are hardly where one would expect them according to the logic of a Western map. By the standards of maps in Mercator projection as Cook used and drew them, the islands seem to be all over the place: Islands thousands of kilometers apart appear right next to each other, islands which should be to the south of Tahiti appear in the northern quadrants, small islands can have very large outlines, etc.

Already Georg Forster doubted Tupaia’s knowledge on this account during the Resolution voyage. He wrote: "if his drawing had been exact, our ships must have sailed over a number of these islands which he [Tupaia] had set down. It is therefore very probable that the vanity of appearing more intelligent than he really was, had prompted him to produce this fancied chart of the South Sea, and perhaps to invent many of the names of islands in it" (Forster 1777, 398).

In the second half of the 20th century, the map became a token in a heated debate about whether Polynesians had settled the Pacific by means of purposeful navigation or by accident (in drift voyages or blown off course by storms). Most notoriously, it was New Zealand historian Andrew Sharp who in the 1950s and 60s used Tupaia’s Map to back up a widely popular argument that Polynesians were incapable of purposeful long distance voyaging, and that their ancestral stories of migration are basically merely self-aggrandizing myth (Sharp 1956). How could anyone without a map or proper instruments such as compass and sextant find targets as small as most Polynesian islands in an ocean as vast as the Pacific? Not even Europeans, after all, could do this at the time, as their measurements of especially longitude (the vertical coordinate in the Cartesian system of Western geography) were very unreliable when at sea.

Tupaia’s rehabilitation as master navigator only came with a sustained decolonial movement and cultural renaissance across the region which strove to recover Oceanic knowledges displaced by imperialism and missionary activities. One part of this renaissance was to recover the ancient technique of Oceanic wayfinding. In Hawai‘i, for instance, Ben Finney and artist Herb Kane reconstructed and built a double-hulled sailing canoe, the Hokule‘a, and found one of the last remaining Micronesian master navigators, Mau Piailug, who volunteered to train the Hawai‘ian navigator Nainoa Thompson in ancient wayfinding techniques. In 1976, Thompson managed to sail the Hokule‘a from Hawai‘i to Tahiti without using Western instruments. The Hokule‘a and similar projects threw new light on Tupaia’s charts, as they foregrounded the fact that the crew of the Endeavour and Tupaia would have conceptualized maritime space in very different ways, and used very different techniques of navigational orientation.

Polynesian wayfinding in many ways inverted the globalized conception that travelers move in static, objectively surveyed and classified worlds. Rather, its core cognitive strategy has been to imagine the canoe as fixed in space, and to dynamise the world surrounding the traveler. Specific seasonal star, sun and wind positions provided situational and relational bearings for travel, memorized by master navigators with the help of long navigation chants. The resulting bearings on island-to-island voyages needed to be constantly reconfigured, to “the attribution of directionality to all the heterogeneous inputs from the sun, stars, winds, waves, reefs, birds, weather, landmarks, seamarks, and sealife.” And additional techniques to ‘fish up’ islands from the horizon came into play, first and foremost strategies of “expanding the target […] by looking for patterns of ocean swells, flights of birds, cloud formations, and reflections of the underside of clouds” (Turnbull 1997, 556).

Over the past 30 years, researchers on Tupaia’s Map accordingly began to suspect that the chart combines Western mapping conventions with distinctly Oceanic modes of geographic orientation, and that this is the main reason why the map has remained inconclusive to modern readers (Di Piazza and Pearthree 2007; Finney 1991, 1998; Turnbull 1997, 1998). Our brief account of how Tupaia’s Map was conceived draws on the continuation of this research by Eckstein and Schwarz (2019).

Georg Forster’s copy of the first draft of the chart suggests that it was the Europeans who began by setting it up for Tupaia. They took an empty sheet, entered the two cardinal axes indicating the directions of north and south and east and west respectively, and then drew the islands that they had themselves seen around Tahiti on the voyage of the Endeavour: These are the islands in the Society Group which on Forster’s copy appear as shaded, plus two more (Tupai, a small island in the north of the group, and Rurutu in the Austral Group south of Tahiti, labeled “Ohiteroa” on the chart). They drew these islands according to the way in which they [p. 88] were trained and used to do maps. This involves imagining an abstracted, central bird-eye perspective on Oceanic space that is thus fixed and strategically covered by an invisible grid of lines demarking latitude and longitude. As Cook and his men had previously (approximately) measured the coordinate positions of all of these islands using compass and sextant, they could confidently locate them on the chart they had set up, in fixed relations of direction and distance from each other. Then they asked Tupaia to take over, and to draw the other islands he said he knew, surely assuming that he would follow their cartographic model.

Tupaia, however, chose not to. Not, presumably, because he did not understand how the Europeans did their maps. He chose not to because their model was not compatible with the way in which Polynesians navigated, how they conceived of the relation between the traveler and the world, how they found the smallest islands across the vast Pacific without instruments or maps, drawing on a sophisticated astronomy, deep knowledge of the ocean, and a profound ancestral connection in oral tradition. In order to still be able to share his knowledge of Oceania with Cook and his crew, Tupaia therefore designed a completely new cartographic model from scratch.

For these purposes, Tupaia requested a little word at the center of his chart, precisely where the cardinal axes cross: e-avatea (“Eawatea”), signifying “the noon” in Tahitian. To cut a much longer story short: In Tupaia’s cartographic system, avatea marks a bearing to the north. It references the direction of the sun in its highest position at noontime (which south of the tropic of Capricorn, and most of the year south of the equator, points due north). Tupaia thus overrode the cardinal logic the Europeans set up for him: For the islands he subsequently drew, north would no longer be ‘up,’ east ‘right,’ south ‘down,’ west ‘left.’ North would from now on be in the center of the chart. What he thus also overrode is the logic of a singular, central perspective.

In Tupaia’s logic, there is no singular orientation abstracted from the traveller. True to his wayfinding tradition, the center of observation is always the va‘a (canoe). Rather than imaging an aloof bird-eye perspective, Tupaia must have invited his European collaborators to situate themselves in the chart, on a va‘a at any of the islands he subsequently drew.

The final key to understanding the new cartographic logic Tupaia set up is that he drew traditional voyaging paths, for travel from island to island. Where these paths are placed in the overall composition of the chart matters little: A path can essentially begin anywhere on the map. What matters, rather, is the relational position of islands to each other on such a path, in the sequence in which they are travelled to. An important guide for adequately reading Tupaia’s Map and to identifying the paths he drew is a list of islands Tupaia shared with Robert Molyneux already in Tahiti, and which Molyneux set down in his ship log in the order in which Tupaia recited them for him. It helps to understand which islands on the chart belong together on set routes, and which do not. It is in this context, finally, that the little word avatea, for a northern bearing located in the center of the chart, comes into play: For Tupaia did not at all place his voyaging paths from island to island randomly. He translated his much more complex system of reckoning and wayfinding – an embodied practice using a whole range of variables from directional stars and constellations to seasonal winds, the angle of swell patterns to the hull, bird flight routes for island finding and many more – into something drastically less complex so Cook and his crew might understand. [p. 89] He basically translated the bearings for purposeful island-to-island travel into the logic of Cook’s compass.

[How Tupaia’s Map can be read] This is how Tupaia’s Map can be read: Viewers are invited to situate themselves in basically any one of the islands Tupaia drew, and to then trace two imaginary lines from their position. The first points to avatea (the sun at noon) marked on the chart by the crossing of the cardinal axes (basically the direction to which the needle of Cook’s compass would point). The second imaginary line is toward the target island on a traditional voyaging route. The angle measured clockwise from the first to the second line, between the direction to avatea in the map’s center and the target island en route, provides the right bearing to set the course. It can be expressed in degrees from 0° to 360°, and thus translated into the terms of the Western compass.

Let us very briefly illustrate this with the perhaps most spectacular example, marking the by far longest single voyage on the chart from the Marquesas Group (northeast of Tahiti) to Hawai‘i (a voyage covering a distance of almost 4.000 km). The departure island is labeled Te-fenua-tane (spelled “Tenewhammeatane” by the European hand which took down the name next to the island shape Tupaia drew on the bottom right of the chart), “the land of men,” a name for the Marquesan Islands still in use in the region. The target island in the upper left corner is Oahu-roa, distant O‘ahu, the third largest island and political center of the Hawai‘i Group (spelled Oahourou on the map). To get their bearings from the Marquesas to Hawai‘i, readers of the chart need to situate themselves in the chart, at the island of departure. They then need to draw an imaginary line to their positional north, marked by avatea where the cardinal axes cross. They can then draw a second imaginary line from the island of departure to the target island. The clockwise angle between the two lines in this case is 335° on Georg Forster’s copy of the first draft map. It is 338° on the fair copy of the third draft which Banks kept. The true bearings from the Marquesas to O‘ahu as can be measured on a Western Mercator map of the Pacific Ocean are 330° NNW.

Fig. 9.3: Voyaging paths on Tupaia’s Map; visualized on the British Library copy (see also Eckstein and Schwarz 2019).

Tupaia’s system works with amazing precision for each island-to-island path on almost all the voyaging routes he set down (with one exception, namely in the Tuāmotuan archipelago ranging from the north to the east and southeast from Tahiti, for reasons we cannot elaborate on here). It is through the consistency of Tupaia’s cartographic system that eventually all islands on the map can be rather reliably identified, even where old names are no longer in use, or the English transcriptions are so corrupted that names can no longer be traced. Where there are deviations between true geographic bearings and the bearings in Tupaia’s own cartographic model, these may even be explained by the fact that for practical navigation, it would have been important to factor in leeway and drift, especially for voyages to the north and south, as the trade winds rather consistently blow from the east for most of the year in the corridor of the South Pacific where Tupaia’s islands (with the exception of O‘ahu in the North Pacific) are placed.

The trade winds also explain why the distance between islands on the voyaging paths Tupaia drew is no reliable marker of true distance. Polynesians exclusively measured distance by the time it took to travel, not, as Cook would have and as his maps indicated, by the geographic space they traversed. Tupaia, for instance, told Cook that a voyage from Rurutu in the Austral Group to Tonga (about 2.500 km to the west) takes “10 or 12 days in going thither and 30 or more in coming back” (Cook 1769, 108), as the return voyage was against the prevailing winds, and could [images pp. 90 and 91] [p. 91] only be done in a short period in summer when westerly winds occurred. As a function of time rather than space, and dependent on seasonal variation and direction of travel, distance was impossible to map for Tupaia, but would have been part of his oral commentary. In this spirit, the size of the island shapes on Tupaia’s chart [p. 92], too, does not correlate with the true geographic size of islands (but occasionally with questions of ritual and genealogical importance).

Fig. 9.4: Voyaging paths on Tupaia’s Map; translated onto a Mercator Map of Oceania.

Tupaia’s Map is an absolute masterpiece of cross-cultural translation. Whereas the Europeans on Cook’s expedition failed to understand any of the complexities of Polynesian navigational practice, Tupaia must have acquired a rather thorough understanding of Cook’s navigational strategies. And he – who never saw or needed a map before he dealt with Cook and his crew – devised a cartographic system from scratch which allowed him to document the vast extent of Polynesian navigational knowledge in a Western representational form.

Basically, Tupaia’s Map shows two composite voyaging routes, one extending from west to east, and one extending from south to north. In the far west, the paths commence with two options for voyaging from Rotuma (north of Fiji) to the Samoan chain. A second segment connects two Tongan island groups south of Samoa with Rarotonga in the Southern Cook Islands. From here, the paths continue via the Austral chain to Mangareva and the Pitcairn Group, all the way to Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The composite voyage from west to east spans about a fifth of the circumference of the globe. The second major composite voyaging route leads from Tahiti via the northern Tuāmotus to the Marquesas Group, and from there, as already briefly illustrated, to distant Hawai‘i (see Figs. 9.3 and 9.4).

250 years after it was drawn, it is clear that Tupaia’s Map is not a result of failed cross-cultural communication, and not the phony work of someone who tried to appear “more intelligent than he really was” (Forster 1777, 398). The reason why it could not be received as a unique masterpiece and testimony to the profound navigational knowledge of Pacific Islanders was that critics in the Western academy only saw what they were conditioned to see when looking at a map, and for the longest time never questioned that there may be very different ways of conceiving and representing Oceanic space, based on very different ideas of being in and relating to the world.

↑

Shared traces? (example: can a search function find all shared documents that we use in our individual or collective projects?)

Shared gestures? (example: not search for all 'walks', which is arbitrary, but for a collaboration as characteristic in the walks)

Shared situations? (example: how can we highlight/find a shared archival document, that is used at different events in different practices on the theme of property? or how can we share a document we want to discuss together on the mapping tool...?)

Collaborations?( example collaborations on the shared text for Techniques Journal)

Shared places? (example: using the same watermill for different practices at a different time. Overlapping walks in Brussels that pass by the same places, by the same authors at anoter moment in time, or by other authors)