On December 14th 2009 De Balie – an Amsterdam-based center for culture and politics – organized an evening about old and new cartographies. Participants were Ferjan Ormeling (Emeritus Professor Cartography, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Utrecht University), Henk van Houtum (Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Political Geography, Head of the Nijmegen Centre for Border Research), Maarten Keulemans (science journalist), Jelle Reumer (director Natural Museum Rotterdam, Special Professor at Utrecht University), Lucas Keijning (NEMO science center), and me. The evening was lead by Volkskrant journalist Martijn van Calmthout. The evening was set up as a prelude to the presentation of a new world map the day after in The Hague. From the announcement:

We have been making maps for centuries, to establish territorial borders or mark safe routes. A map is a model of reality, and the terrain of a fascinating branch of science: cartography. Maps represent social and political choices, which start forming their own truths. For example the Persian Gulf is not the Persian Gulf everywhere, the world on its head or with China in the middle all of a sudden looks very different, and maps today seem less complete because of an increasing number of ‘white spots’…

Some of the issues addressed this evening concerned the relation between model and reality, the consequences of new map-making media technologies for society and politics, and – unavoidably it seems in such popularizing science discussions – the question whether new developments are good or bad? I was invited to talk about the influence of mobile and locative media and cartographic representations.

Cartographer Ferjan Ormeling started the evening with an overview of cartography as a professional scientific discipline. He defined cartography as “the transmission of spatial information for decision-making”. In a few slides he walked through cartographic history, mainly from a western perspective as the attempt to explore and chart unknown territories, with ensuing overseas trade and later colonization in its wake. Some of the interesting topics he touched upon included the fact that cartography is always subjective and culturally determined. Dutch maps for instance often leave out ditches because they are everywhere, whereas in Belgium they are included on maps. The world maps we know today are clearly Euro-centric, placing other territories in the periphery of Europe. Maps were hugely important for an upcoming sense of nationalism (a point made by Benedict Anderson in his well-known work “Imagined Communities” 1991). Nation-states were now drawn in monochrome colors, clearly separating them from their neighbors. Further, names on maps are often surrounded by controversy. For example in the 1970s attempts were made to modernize the spelling of Dutch town and city names. This met with fierce opposition from local government, because this meant some places would lose their name-based exclusivity (Veghel sounds more chic than Veggel, ditto for Wijchen – Wijgen). Map-making therefore always involves selection, manipulation, and generalization. What is displayed? What is left out? Where are borders drawn? What is on the map and what lies outside of the map? Ormeling closed his talk by assessing the relevance of new technologies like Google Maps. Here it became interesting, since Ormeling tenaciously clung to the idea of the unique professional expertise of cartographers. While digital technologies certainly are useful, Ormeling argued, the role of cartographers remains important because they are the ones who “fill in” these satellite images, and “give meaning” to those satellite views. Sure, there are interesting attempts by amateurs to engage map-making (such as Openstreetmap). But there are lots of things professionals can and amateurs can’t do, like accurately mapping a rugged coastline.

Then Henk van Houtum and I joined the discussion. Van Houtum argued new geographic technologies like TomTom and Google Maps turn all of us into geographers. But very uncritical geographers. We unwittingly feed all kinds of information to search engines. Van Houtum worries about the loss of personal autonomy as we are surrender ourselves to various digital search and control systems. But on the more positive side, new technologies enable far more people to engage in place-making and representing spatial knowledge. The old monopoly of mapmaking by geographers under the auspice of the nation-state is crumbling, and that is a good thing.

I argued that under the influence of mobile and locative media, cartography has changed from being a predominantly geographical medium in which the representation of space and place is central, to a social medium in which online social networking acquires a cartographic element. Our mediated social relations are now being ‘rooted’ in physical places. A good example of such a locative social network is Bliin, a project by Selene Kolman, who was in the audience, and Stef Kolman.

This has in part been a response to our perception of the internet as placeless, and broader social and spatial shifts often grouped under the name ‘globalization’. Further, New technologies offer people the opportunity to write space and place with their own experiences (e.g. by ‘geotagging’ places), rather than just reading the maps made by others (see e.g. Greenfield & Shepard about “read/write urbanism” p. 12-13). This means cartography is no longer the prerogative of professionals but indeed, as Henk van Houtum said, we have all become geographers. Already in 1946 geographer J.K. Wright proposed in front of the Association of American Geographers that the earth had been largely mapped by conventional geographical method. The time had come to map our earth all over again. Wright called upon geographers to map folk knowledge of places, and more aesthetic experiences of our environments. This would vastly expand the terrain of classic geography to include what Wright called ‘geosophical’ knowledge. Wright would probably have been thrilled to see how his plea is being realized today… A third change is that maps now consist not only of mostly spatial information but also temporal information. The historicity of place as a process is made visible by the range of micro-narratives that are attached to places through locative media. Maps become far more dynamic representations of spatial and temporal knowledge. A nice example is the project Droombeek, by Edward Mac Gillavry, who was also present this evening, and Peter Dubois.

In this project inhabitants of Roombeek, an area of the city Enschede which was destroyed in 2000 by a huge fireworks disaster, recount their memories and stories of their neighborhood. These stories are made available to others by taking a GPS-walk. A fourth change is the database structure of geographical knowledge captured in maps. We can now query items through maps. Most of these searches are about simple properties like categories of places and proximity, such as finding restaurants nearby. However while we still can’t search for sadness in New York (PDF 2,4 MB; Russell – Headmap Manifesto – p. 31), we are already awfully close.. Fifth, new cartographies alter our subjective experiences of space and place. For instance, locative media can inform a more aesthetic experience of space and mobility. Someone who is working on GPS-based cartography as a new form of landscape painting is Esther Polak, who also joined this evening – just back from a trip to Nigeria. And what about the fact that in many locative media views the ego is the center of the map? You no longer have to first find your position on the map. Rather, the environment revolves around you. Does this literally lead to a more ‘ego-centric’ worldview? Finally, maps are increasingly often used as a way to visualize and transfer increasingly complex datasets. Maps are becoming metaphors to represent information, and for thinking. An organization that has been doing this for while is Informationlab by ‘information architect’ Auke Touwslager, who also attended the evening (yes, good crowd present..). To summarize, under the influence of locative media mapping tends to shift from mostly objectifying representations to highly subjective, from general to thematic representations, and from visualizing topological rather than topographical information. I wanted to raise some more ‘political’ issues of these developments but – alas – time was running short… (I couldn’t even bring in half of the above).

It was interesting to see how the audience, and ‘old school geographer’ Ormeling, reacted to this new media story. Ormeling himself did not feel these developments had much to do with his profession as a cartographer, apart from being handy new instruments. This strikingly parallels the dominant reaction of another professional audience: architects and planners. New media technologies as instruments yes, but investigating the consequences of these technologies for the professional practice itself… no. In the audience, meanwhile, someone wondered in exasperation “this is al very nice but who actually wants to know all the time where their friends are?”. Indeed only one or two people raised their hands. Although the predominantly white middle-aged male audience perhaps might not exactly be representative of very active mobile media users, this question of course is a legitimate one. All talks about new representations of knowledge and new ‘participant audiences’ or ‘networked publics’ in spite, who are “we” (we – the people more or less professionally dealing with geo-locative media) actually representing in our talks and thoughts? The majority of people, at least during this evening, seem very skeptical about these developments. The discussion immediately turned to the pervasive influence of mobile media themselves in everyday life and all sorts of ethical discussions, rather than pausing for a moment to look at media developments and their influence on cartography. Too bad this somewhat fell of radar at the end of the evening. Luckily, columnist Jelle Reumer restored this by evoking the poetics of maps. Looking at maps above all brings up half-forgotten memories of the places one once was and where beautiful or sad things happened. Maps also stir the imagination about places one would perhaps never go. I thought Reumer’s short talk was a nice closure of the evening, which put matters in a broader perspective. Aside from their obvious differences (differences that do matter, as I’ve tried to show here), to what extend does it matter whether such imaginations occur by holding a map made of paper or by looking at a handheld screen?

Maandag 14 december om 20:00 in De Balie is er een kenniscafé over “Hogere kaartenkunde”. Ik zit in het panel en zal het hebben over de invloed van locatieve media op cartografische representaties.

We maken al eeuwenlang kaarten, om landsgrenzen vast te leggen of veilige routes aan te geven. Een kaart is een model van de werkelijkheid, en het terrein van een fascinerende tak van wetenschap: Cartografie.

Kaarten vormen de weerslag van sociale en politieke keuzes, die vervolgens hun eigen waarheid gaan vormen. Zo is de Perzische Golf niet overal in de wereld de Perzische Golf, ziet de wereld er op z’n kop of met China als middelpunt opeens heel anders uit en lijken kaarten tegenwoordig minder compleet te worden door een toenemend aantal ‘witte vlekken’…

Martijn van Calmthout gaat in gesprek met cartograaf Ferjan Ormeling, met Henk van Houtum, hoofd van het Nijmegen Centre for Border Research, Radboud Universiteit en met Michiel de Lange, promovendus aan de faculteit van Wijsbegeerte in Rotterdam.

Zoals elk KennisCafé zijn ook columnisten Maarten Keulemans en Jelle Reumer van de partij.

Het KennisCafé is een coproductie van De Balie, De Volkskrant, KNAW en Science Center NEMO.

Meer info: http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?podiumid=politiek&articleid=327853

In this article I discern five possible ‘levels’ to understand urban games: (1) the city is often used as a model to construct an architecture of computer and video games; (2) the city itself has historically been understood in multiple ways as a game or playground; (3) pervasive games take digital games out to the streets and bridge the digital-physical distinction; (4) (serious) games are used in the process of (re)building actual cities; (5) urban games are a metaphorical lens through which to look at utopian and dystopian futures of cities. For each of these ‘levels’ I raise some relevant questions.

You can read the article here >> or download a PDF of the article (1,6 MB).

There are a number of other interesting contributions. See the journal’s table of contents.

[I guess I should try a new front image next time, it's getting routine...]

download presentation (PDF 1.4 MB)

Read review at www.themobilecity.nl >>

Below the files (mostly in Dutch):

090210_hva_mdelange01.pdf – Some slides about campaigning + technical aspects of the mobile phone

090210_hva_mdelange02.pdf – Some slides about locative media

Dutch tech/nerd blog tweakers.net report that Hyves, Holland’s most popular social network, has struck a deal with operator KPN (the biggest telcom in NL) to add locational information to text messages Hyves users send to each other. According to KPN, questions such as “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” are often asked by mobile phone users.

KPN customers can switch the service on by first registering for this service on Hyves. Whenever they send a text message containing information about what they are currently doing to a specific number, they will be positioned on a Google Maps application within Hyves, which may be seen by other Hyves users.

This is just another step in the field of LBS (location based services) that telcoms are seemingly desperately trying to develop. LBS had been a buzzword for some time now, but the real “killer-app” hasn’t come up yet. I’m curious to see how this will develop, since these are very strong partners indeed.

Just a thought, I think questions as quoted above like “where are you?” and “what are you doing?” shouldn’t be taken too literary. We don’t really need or even want to know this information all the time. They are often just a sign of reciprocal involvement with the life of the other person, a type of mobile gift exchanges.

Moreover, part of the fun in talking through the mobile phone is also the joy of imagining what someone else is doing at the moment, and trying to picture where he or she is. It is part of the process of creating “imagined proximity” or “co-presence”. I wonder what kind of new imaginings will arise when this kind of background information is already given through location based services? If we know all this kind of stuff in advance, is there even sense in still making the actual phone call? Perhaps in an unexpected way, LBS as the chicken with the golden eggs may turn out to be a bullet in the telcoms own foot.

From Always-On to Always-There (PDF – 412 KB).

* NM fieldtrip part 1

* NM fieldtrip part 2

* Google Earth animatie:

* Robot demo TheUpgrade!

Business in Nigeria has changed a lot with the advent of the mobile phone. It has become much easier to arrange logistics and deal with customers. It comes at a price however. First, costs are very high for most people. Mr. Dominic spends between 10.00 – 15.000 nairas a month on mobile phone use (approx. 60 – 95 euros). One of his colleagues we spoke to – running a retail shop with many different customers – even claimed to pay up to 30.000 naira a month! And another cost is that while the mobile phone gives individual freedom to communicate and engage in business, it also places a heavy burden on ones shoulders, since family and friends are now constantly calling for help and support, even when far away. So mobile telephone technology in the west-African context seems to paradoxically promote individual possibilities and entrepreneurship and a discourse of modernity, while at the same time being a medium that provides possibilities for stronger reliance on ones social circle and strengthens tradition.

The whole trip to Jos lasted 2 days. The first day was not so quick due to engine difficulties. At the fall of night we had to split up and go ahead in the security car that followed us. This became a hallucinogenic 4 hour nightly speed-drive to Abuja, including deep potholes, sudden roadblocks, bushfires, the fear of armed robbers and joining a spontaneous car convoy at up to 140 km/h through thick layers of smoke. We arrived in Abuja at 22:00, 4 hours after dark. The next day drive to Jos was more comfortable

We were shown around by the proud Italian captain of the new port in Lagos, owned by Grimaldi.

Just a shot of a shot inside the WAMCO warehouse. We were comparing the quality of our photocams.

Hilltop in Bachit where we made a stop to call to NWO for the Co-Ops launchs. THis was the best place for reception.

Esther pointing at some maps that hung from the district chiefs house whom we visited.

Esther, Sadik Balewa and Ab at Dini & Jaap’s place

Talking to the Berom chief under the Mango tree and explaining our purposes in the village of Shonong

Ab, ElHadj Masseia and John talking about routes

Ab, ElHadj Masseia and John talking about routes and drawing a map on the ground

Fulani Woman in Shonong preparing my first nonno (yogurt drink)

Another Fulani woman after having prepared my second nonno at the market of Makera. Here Fulani Milk and Peak come together – see the cans in front!!

Ya’u milking a cow. I followed some Fulani men with their cattle for a day in the field.

Ya’u, Isa and Hassan with fresh milk. Hassan is wearing the GPS device I gave him. He has walked a really nice trail that I hope to post later.

Hassan and Ya’u in front of their hut, near where the cows spend the night, and they too

Ya’u, Hassan, Isa

More Fulani boys show up, with their own herd

Oldest brother Maikudi has a closer look at the GPS device Hassan is wearing

Who said being a herdsman is hard work…?

Everything I wrote down caught the immediate interest of everybody. The Fulani are very keen on mediation!

The making of Fulani milk

Maikudi killed a viper in the field. The Berom farmer cut off its head and tail, let it drip empty, skin it, and dry it. The next day he told me he had a nice chopchop!

Again, everything I photographed or filmed was very interesting to the men

The Fulani men I went walking with are looking at the pictures I made with Esther’s camera. So I took a picture of that with the cellphone. How meta!

One of the things that struck me most during that day was the close interaction of agricultural life and semi-nomadic pastoralism. As soon as fields were harvested, the Fulani could access the land for their cattle to graze. The cows both strip the land clean of remaining plants and shit on it, so it is fertilized again. Here sorghum is harvested.

Hassan on his favorite cow. Maikudi behind it.

And after a hot day in the field, I saw a large can of Peak Milk standing near one of the houses of the family of Ahmadu Idris (the father of Maikudi, Ya’u and Hassan)!!

OK, tha-tha-tha-thatsallfolks!

Strange name indeed for a phone vendor. They sell all kinds of moderately recent phones there, from 4900 naira (~= 30 euros) up to 45000 nairas. Odd behavior by the guy behind the desk. He did not seem to want to sell us a phone at all. According to Ab, this is a much wanted item among Fulani!