Barbara Piatti

Bio: Barbara Piatti is an academic researcher from ETH Zurich. The author has contributed to research in topics: Counterfactual thinking & Level of detail (writing). The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 7 publications receiving 122 citations.

Mapping Literature: Towards a Geography of Fiction

Abstract: Modern cartography has the ability to map almost any phenomenon for which spatial relationships are of primary relevance. While existing cartographic products cover already an enormous variety of topics, the visualisation of ‘other’ geographies gains more and more attention. These other geographies may not accord to the ‘normal’ spaces usually mapped, hence cartography is both challenged and forced to find uncommon solutions. Literature and its fictional spaces might serve as a fi ne example (but one could also think of soundscapes or emotions). Doubtlessly, the realm of fiction is defined by different ‘rules’ to the geography that cartography customarily addresses. This paper deals with two main questions: Firstly, how to map narratives and their complex spatial structure? Secondly, what do we achieve by mapping literature? By searching for some (provisional) answers, the horizon of a promising interdisciplinary research field – a future literary geography – becomes visible.

Mapping the Ontologically Unreal – Counterfactual Spaces in Literature and Cartography

Abstract: This paper deals with the realm of alternate worlds. Although the emphasis of such creations relies on historical alteration (resulting in an alternate time stream), settings can impressively support the historical alternative: most alternate history plots come with shifted or even newly drawn political borders and are set in transformed urban and rural spaces. Not surprisingly, actual maps or at least remarkably detailed layouts of the geographical framework play a significant role. In other words, counterfactual spaces can be mapped with words or cartographic symbols; they can be both told and visualized. By including both concepts from the field of theory of the narrative and from a cartographer’s point of view, focus is laid on various strategies in order to map and/or remap cities, countries, as well as entire geopolitical situations.

Data-driven Expansion of Dense Regions – A Cartographic Approach in Literary Geography

Abstract: Cartographic visualisation of the literary space is facing a major challenge resulting from different levels of detail within which the textual descriptions of settings are made by authors. Those range between very detailed descriptions within parts of a city to spatially spread events within a country, or long journeys across continents. Depending on the fictional texts, fictional action often concentrates on a few main places, resulting in high information density – in the form of various individual settings. As well, they are also embedded in a larger environment. When interactively analysing or choosing a section to print a literary map with individual spatial elements, the user has to choose a map scale, which will result in the output of either a detailed representation of a main place or the geographical overview of the fictional space having a small level of detail. However, it would be a great advantage to receive as much information as possible from one single map view. In order to achie...

Special Issue on Art & Cartography

Abstract: (2009). Special Issue on Art & Cartography. The Cartographic Journal: Vol. 46, Art & Cartography, pp. 289-291.

Die Geographie der Fiktion — Das Projekt „Ein literarischer Atlas Europas“

Abstract: Wo spielt Literatur? Wie nutzt, uberformt, verfremdet oder re-modelliert sie — uber mehrere Epochen — bestehende geographische Raume? Am Institut fur Kartografie der ETH Zurich werden in einem interdisziplinaren Projekt literaturgeographische Methoden und Visualisierungsmodelle konzipiert. Diese bilden die Basis fur eine neuartige, raumlich strukturierte, kartographisch unterstutzte Literaturgeschichte — fur einen literarischen Atlas Europas. Ein raumbezogenes, interaktives Informationssystem macht die vielfaltigen Wechselwirkungen zwischen realen und imaginaren Geographien sichtbar und bildet die Raume der Fiktion in adaquater Weise ab. Dank vielfaltiger Abfrage- und Darstellungsoptionen eroffnen sich dabei neue Fragehorizonte und Themenbereiche fur die Literaturwissenschaft.

Cartography I Mapping narrative cartography

Abstract: This report focuses on the growing interest in the relationship between maps, narratives and meta-narratives. Following a brief historical contextualization of these relationships, this report explores their current state in the Geoweb era. Using the distinction between story maps and grid maps as an analytical framework, I review emerging issues around the extensive use of technologies and online mapping services (i.e. Google maps) to convey stories and to produce new ones. Drawing on literature in film studies, literary studies, visual arts, computer science and communication I also emphasize the emergence of new forms of spatial expressions interested in providing different perspectives about places and about stories associated to places. In sum, I argue that mapping both vernacular knowledge and fiction is central understanding places in depth.

Narrative Cartography: From Mapping Stories to the Narrative of Maps and Mapping

Abstract: This paper provides an overview of the multiple ways of envisioning the relationships between maps and narratives. This is approached from a map making perspective. Throughout the process of editing this special issue, we have identified two main types of relationships. Firstly, maps have been used to represent the spatio-temporal structures of stories and their relationships with places. Oral, written and audio-visual stories have been mapped extensively. They raise some common cartographic challenges, such as improving the spatial expression of time, emotions, ambiguity, connotation, as well as the mixing of personal and global scales, real and fictional places, dream and reality, joy and pain. Secondly, the potential of maps as narratives and the importance of connecting the map with the complete mapping process through narratives is addressed. Although the potential of maps to tell stories has already been widely acknowledged, we emphasize the increasing recognition of the importance of develo...

Geographic Information Science: Visualization, visual methods, and the geoweb

Abstract: This review considers two recent trajectories of research on the geospatial web: efforts to develop appropriate methodologies for working with the new forms of geographic information that are part of it, and studies of its cultural, social, and political significance. In both arenas, visualization and visual methods are central. I show how methodologies drawn from quantitative and qualitative approaches to geovisualization in GIScience offer productive ways of working with geoweb-based information in research, and examine recent efforts to use critical visual methods to study the geoweb as visual practice.

Narrative space and spatial transference in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs fairy tales

Abstract: Owing to the lack of concrete information provided by the narratives and the genreʼs unspecified setting, narrative space in fairy tales has been largely overlooked or dismissed as an inactive background for the action. Research which has considered this topic typically views it in terms of its symbolic potential, studying space in order to learn about other narrative elements (e.g. characters) or the implied meanings of the texts. This dissertation views narrative space as a concrete, material aspect of the narrative which is significant in itself. The main research question posed in the dissertation is: what do fairy tales tell us about narrative space and what does narrative space tell us about fairy tales? The main aim of the dissertation is therefore twofold: first, it examines how narrative space is structured in fairy tales and how the fairy tale conveys space-related information; second, it asks whether there is anything about the traits and structure of fairy-tale space that can be seen as genre-specific, i.e. that sets the fairy tale apart from other short prose narrative genres. The research is based on a textual analysis of the English translation of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimmʼs collection Kinder- und Hausmarchen (Childrenʼs and Household Tales, 1857). While its primary focus is on fairy tales, the dissertation also considers other genres included in the collection (animal tales, legends, religious tales, etc.). The research combines the knowledge produced within fairy-tale scholarship (folklore and literature studies) with the methodological tools of narratology. By considering narrative space and spatial transference, the dissertation aims to prompt a reconsideration of the fairy-tale genre and its definitions. One of its key findings is therefore a revised definition of the fairy tale as a genre which encompasses two domains – the magical and the non-magical – separated by a firm boundary, which must be crossed in the course of the story. What sets this interdomain boundary apart is the fact that it can be crossed from both sides, but only temporarily and only if certain conditions are met. The examination of genres through the prism of the domain has led to a reconsideration of our initial genre classification and prompted the conclusion that aetiological tales, Schwank tales, and didactic tales, which were initially listed as independent genres, are modes (subgenres) rather than genres. The thesis also shows that fairy-tale space is dynamic and relational, and that the lack of explicit spatial information should not be seen as an indication of the insignificance of space, but rather an expression of the genreʼs stylistic parsimony. Although the findings are based on the study of the Grimmsʼ fairy tales, the dissertation aims to provide an analytical framework that is applicable to other fairy-tale corpora.