ANTOINE PICON
Cartographic documents reveal themselves to be ambiguous insofar as they are based on a series of compromises between conflicting tendencies and ideals. Conventional signs may help to identify better some of their ambiguities, beginning with the interpretation of maps as either pictures seen from above or as visualized databases, an opposition far older than one might imagine. The opposition is found in the divergent approaches to mapping taken in the Renaissance by Leonardo da Vinci and Leon Battista Alberti, two pioneers of modern urban cartography. Whereas da Vinci’s map of the city of Imola from 1502 represented a view from the sky, Alberti’s Descriptio Urbis Romae (Delineation of the City of Rome), conceived in the 1440s, consisted of a series of coordinates locating the respective positions of a series of remarkable points of the city, from the corners of the Aurelian Wall to major churches.1 With few conventional signs, a map tends to look like pictures from above, like da Vinci’s seminal representation. Too many of these signs, as in Alberti’s case, and a map can be considered the result of a series of operations of measurement gathered in a database rather than a visual representation. In the first case, the danger is to be abused by a pictorial character that is always somewhat fallacious since the map is never a pure image. In the second case, a problem may arise when the marking of an abundance of elements belonging to the database makes the map difficult to read.
The general history of mapping is marked by an evolution toward more and more standardized and abstract conventional signs, which is in complete contrast to the rich iconography that characterized ancient maps, with their monsters and savage tribes denoting uncharted and probably dangerous seas or landmasses, tiny castles and church towers showing the position of fiefdoms and parishes, and forests, fields, and meadows meticulously representing the space in between. Despite this evolution, many conventional signs have retained traces of these former ages of cartographic representation. For instance, crosses are still commonly used to indicate churches. Color codes tend also to align on common perception: fields and meadows are often green, desert the color of sand, ice- and snow-covered areas white. Conventional signs thus relate to another ambiguity of maps, namely their somewhat contradictory aspirations to be plugged into social imagination and to stand apart as objective documents that transcend a naive representation of reality.
While being part of a collective imagination, maps are also meant to twist it in specific ways. Conventional signs reveal themselves instrumental in this process. They give more or less importance to objects and phenomena, thus channeling the attention of the observer and suggesting new ways to interpret what they see. This is to say that maps are never neutral, even when they claim to be objective. Maps are inextricably assessment and project, whether this project be about the possible mobilization of natural resources, about military stakes, or about social and urban futures.2
Conventional signs also relate to aesthetic ambiguity, which is seldom acknowledged in contemporary cartography—contrary again to ancient maps, in which geographical information and ornamentation went hand in hand, from the elaborate cartouches that embellished their corners to the monsters and savage tribes that animated their uncharted parts. Notwithstanding this tendency toward denegation of aesthetics, our conventional signs are seldom chosen solely for their legibility. They usually appear within the frame of a graphic chart imbued with aesthetic concerns.
A critical inquiry regarding the nature and use of conventional signs has become all the more urgent, now that the development of digital tools and digital media is currently challenging a number of traditional notions about cartography. For instance, the distinction between image and database is being blurred to a degree rarely reached before. With tools like Google Maps, the impression of realism has become so strong that one may be tempted to forget the constructed nature of the images of the earth that appear on our computer screens. Never has the frontier between imagination and objectivity been so porous. As digital media artist Laura Kurgan reminds us that maps are more than ever meant to convey intentions.3 It is worth remembering in this connection the military origin of many of the key technologies behind contemporary digital mapping, beginning with GPS.
In our digital lives, conventional signs have multiplied. They no longer indicate simply the position of classical landmarks like mountaintops or churches. They now signal the presence of nearby shops, restaurants, or nightclubs. The localization of friends may even appear on some social media maps. Such proliferation challenges the very notion of cartographic codes. Everything, or almost everything, can be mapped, and there seems to be no limit to the variety and number of items that can be displayed, often in a dynamic way, on a single map. In such a context, it may be worth rethinking the role of cartographic conventions. We might be entering a new magic kingdom, no longer populated with monsters and savages, but now covered by an unlimited sprawl of signs and icons, a kingdom on the maps of which ever-changing commercial and social suggestions are engulfing the stable references privileged by traditional cartography. Afloat on an ocean of dynamic references, it seems that we have no other choice than to navigate. But maps have always been both about contemplation and action. A critical reflection on cartographic conventions, as appears here in Cartographic Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary, may constitute a necessary step toward the reintroduction of a much-needed meditative stance in the rapidly expanding contemporary cartographic realm.
1See Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo: Il Codice Hammer e la Mappa di Imola (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985); Mario Carpo and Francesco Furlan, eds., Leon Battista Alberti’s Delineation of the City of Rome (Descriptio Urbis Romae) (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007).
2Denis E. Cosgrove, ed., Mappings (London: Reaktion Books, 1999).
3Laura Kurgan, Close Up at a Distance: Mapping Technology & Politics (New York: Zone Books, 2013).