Into the Unknown: Navigating Spaces, Terra Incognita and the Art Archive

This paper is a navigation across time and space – travelling from 16th century colonial world maps which marked unknown territories as Terra Incognita, via 18th century cabinets of curiosities; to the unknown spaces of the Anthropocene Age, in which for the first time we humans are making a permanent geological record on the earth’s ecosystems. This includes climate change. The recurring theme is loss and becoming lost. I investigate what happens when someone who is lost attempts to navigate and find parallels between Terra Incognita and the art archive, and explore the points where mapping, archiving and collecting intersect. Once something is perceived to be at risk, the fear of loss and the impulse to preserve emerges. I investigate why in the Anthropocene Age we have a stronger impulse to the archive and look to the past, rather than face the unknowable effects of climate change. This is counterpointed by artists, whose hybrids practices engage with re-imaging and re-imagining today’s world, thereby moving us forward into the unknown. ‘Becoming’ is therefore another central theme. The art archive is explored from multiple perspectives – as an artist, an art archive user and an archivist – noting that the subject, the consumer and the archivist all have very differing agendas. I question who uses physical archives today and how we can retain our sense of curiosity. I conclude with a link to an interactive artwork, which visualises, synthesises and expands this research

Chief Kerry's moose : a guidebook to land use and occupancy mapping, research design, and data collection

Aboriginal peoples in Canada have been mapping aspects of their cultures for more than a generation. Indians, Inuit, Métis, non-status Indians and others have called their maps by different names at various times and places: land use and occupancy; land occupancy and use; traditional use; traditional land use and occupancy; current use; cultural sensitive areas; and so on. I use “land use and occupancy mapping” in a generic sense to include all the above. The term refers to the collection of interview data about traditional use of resources and occupancy of lands by First Nation persons, and the presentation of those data in map form. Think of it as the geography of oral tradition, or as the mapping of cultural and resource geography. (PDF contains 81 pages.

Supporting location-based inquiry learning across school, field and home contexts

Here we explore how technology can be applied to support inquiry learning spanning a range of contexts. The development process of a location-based inquiry learning toolset is presented for a secondary school GCSE Geography project. The design framework used and the process of participatory development is discussed with regard to the co-development of the activities and tools involved in an inquiry project. The lessons learned relate to the formation of a motivational context for the inquiry; the role of personal data collection in the field; the use of bridging representations across field and classroom activities; and the development of flexible, re-usable tools to support and bridge sequences of activities

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church: Architectural History and Preservation Possibilities

This thesis focuses on the architectural and historical significance of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It comprises two major sections: a historical narrative and a research narrative. Thus, it is meant to illuminate the history of St. Mary’s and to guide future research. The historical narrative contains information regarding the context into which the church was built, the founding of the parish, the construction of the church building, and selected significant changes. The research narrative contains a list of archives consulted, suggestions of uses for the information obtained, and a description of the necessary steps to list St. Mary’s in the National Register of Historic Places

Introduction: Creating new worlds out of old texts

Despite initial expectations that globalization would eradicate the need for geographical space and distance, "maps matter" today in ways that were unimaginable a mere two decades ago. Technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with spatial formations, while the ever-increasing mobility of ideas, capital, and people has created a world in which urban and regional inequalities are being heightened at an accelerating pace. As a result, the ability of any given place to reap the benefits of global socio-technical flows mainly hinges on the forging of connections that can transcend the limits of its material location. In contrast to the traditional "topographic" perspective, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is being increasingly conceived through a "topological" lens: as a set of overlapping reticulations in which the nature and frequency of links among different sites matter more than the physical distances between them. At the same time, a parallel stream of innovation has revolutionized the understanding of space in disciplines such as history, archaeology, classics, and linguistics. Much of this work has been concentrated in the burgeoning field of the "digital humanities", which has been persistently breaking new ground in the conceptualization of past and present places. When seen in the context of globalization-induced dynamics, such developments emphasize the need for developing cartographic approaches that can bring out the inherently networked structure of social space via a lens that is both theoretically integrative and heuristically sharp. We have decided to respond to these analytical and methodological challenges by focusing on ancient Greek literature: a corpus of work that has often been characterized as being free of the constraints imposed by post-Enlightenment cartography, despite setting the foundations of many contemporary map-making methods. In the 12 chapters that follow, we highlight the rich array of representational devices employed by authors from this era, whose narrative depictions of spatial relations defy the logic of images and surfaces that dominates contemporary cartographic thought. There is a particular focus on Herodotus' Histories - a text that is increasingly taken up by classicists as the example of how ancient perceptions of space may have been rather different to the cartographic view that we tend to assume. But this volume also considers the spatial imaginary through the lens of other authors (e.g. Aristotle), genres (e.g. hymns), cultural contexts (e.g. Babylon), and disciplines (e.g. archaeology), with a view to stimulating a broad-based discussion among readers and critics of Herodotus and ancient Greek literature and culture more generally. In fact, many of the disciplinary and conceptual perspectives explored here are at their inception, and have a more general relevance for the wider community of humanities and social science researchers interested in novel mapping techniques. The resulting juxtaposition of more "traditional", philological discussions of space with chapters dedicated to the exploration of new technologies may jar or appear uneven, especially since we have not set out to privilege one method over another. But it is through viewing these different approaches in the round and reading them alongside each other that, we maintain, we can best disrupt customary ways of thinking (and writing) about space and catch a glimpse of new possibilities

Pioneers, subcultures and cooperatives: The grassroots augmentation of urban places

About the book: There have been numerous possible scenarios depicted on the impact of the internet on urban spaces. Considering ubiquitous/pervasive computing, mobile, wireless connectivity and the acceptance of the Internet as a non extraordinary part of our everyday lives mean that physical urban space is augmented, and digital in itself. This poses new problems as well as opportunities to those who have to deal with it. This book explores the intersection and articulation of physical and digital environments and the ways they can extend and reshape a spirit of place. It considers this from three main perspectives: the implications for the public sphere and urban public or semi-public spaces; the implications for community regeneration and empowerment; and the dilemmas and challenges which the augmentation of space implies for urbanists. Grounded with international real -life case studies, this is an up-to-date, interdisciplinary and holistic overview of the relationships between cities, communities and high technologies

Maps, fields, and boundary cairns: demarcation and resistance in colonial Cyprus

An important component of the administration and control of a colony by an external power was the demarcation and classification of the land and its people. This was certainly the case in Cyprus under British colonial rule (1878-1960), as three case studies demonstrate: the topographical survey of the island by H. H. Kitchener in 1878-1883; the cadastral survey of 1909-1929; and the work of the forest delimitation commission from 1881 to 1896. This was not achieved without resistance on a variety of levels. Ironically, part of the opposition came from the structure of the colonial demarcation and classification project itself

Development of a low-cost methodology for data acquisition and flood risk assessment in the floodplain of the river Moustiques in Haiti

Over the past two decades, Haiti was struck by 30 storm events and 40 floods, affecting over 3.5 million people. Being the poorest country in the Northern hemisphere, it is unable to allocate funds to risk assessment and management. Therefore, this research developed a low-cost methodology to analyse flood risk in data-sparse regions. The floodplain of the river Moustiques was chosen as study area. First, a methodology was developed and input data were gathered from existing data, literature, field data, and open source data. Then, a flood risk assessment was performed for the area. The resulting economic risk map and social risk map indicate that the region is at risk for nearly 2 million USD and has potentially 60 casualties per year. Although the assessment was performed as a quantitative analysis, the resulting maps should be interpreted qualitatively, as the values could not be validated. Nonetheless, the results clearly indicate the high-risk areas where measures should be taken. Furthermore, this research shows the potential of citizen science, in the form of a questionnaire survey conducted in the floodplain. This low-cost and fast acquisition method provided many different input data for flood risk assessment, from population data to damage factors and validation information on historic flooding

Mapping intangibilities in creative tourism territories through tangible objects: a methodological approach for developing creative tourism offers

What can people express about their places through the objects that they valorise and link to their territory? Can objects create narratives about a place's identity and collect significant cultural information that locate people in their places? Can such cultural mapping be a useful tool in the design of creative tourist offers? The Project CREATOUR held a series of Idea Laboratories with several entities that provide creative tourism experiences, approaching cultural mapping through objects as a tool for regional actors to discover what is 'so special' about their places, a way to link tourism offers with the community where they take place. These exercise lead participants to remark on the importance and idiosyncrasy of their regions and evidenced the importance of cultural mapping to a more sustainable offer and the overall marketing of destinations. Mapping intangibilities through tangible objects helped to capture what gives meaning to particular places.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia CREATOUR - 16437 COMPETE2020, POR Lisboainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio