Cinematic Cartography: Projecting Place Through Film
01 Jan 2012-pp 68-84
TL;DR: A frame for cultural mappings, film is modern cartography as discussed by the authors, and does the flâneur do anything different from the map of Paris? But it is difficult to make a movie from a map of the city.
Abstract: Couldn’t an exciting film be made from the map of Paris? From the unfolding of its various aspects in temporal succession? From the compression of a centuries-long movement of streets, boulevards, arcades, and squares into the space of half an hour? And does the flâneur do anything different? (Benjamin 1999: 83)
A frame for cultural mappings, film is modern cartography. (Bruno 2002: 71)
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TL;DR: The potential of maps as narratives and the importance of connecting the map with the complete mapping process through narratives is addressed in this paper, which is approached from a map-making perspective, as well as the mixing of personal and global scales, real and fictional places, dream and reality, joy and pain.
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...
147 citations
Cites background from "Cinematic Cartography: Projecting P..."
...In his attempt to map the emerging field of cinematic cartography, Les Roberts (2012) has formalized the different ways of envisioning the relationships between films and maps/mapping through five ‘overlapping clusters’ (see also Hallam and Roberts, 2014)....
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...In this special issue, Les Roberts provides a compelling illustration of the power of video for emotional mapping....
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...These clusters include ‘(1) maps and mapping in films; (2) mapping of film production and consumption; (3) movie mapping and cinematographic tourism; (4) cognitive and emotional mapping; and (5) film as spatial critique’ (Roberts, 2012, p. 70)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the historical division between empiricist and critical approaches in cartography has shifted recently, and the authors focus on cognitive cartography in order to examine how this historical division has shifted.
Abstract: In this third report, I focus on cognitive cartography in order to examine how the historical division between empiricist and critical approaches in cartography has shifted recently. I do so by bui...
58 citations
Cites background from "Cinematic Cartography: Projecting P..."
...…and ‘mental’ recurrently appeared in association with ‘cartography’, ‘maps’ and ‘mapping’, not only in the expected area of cognitive cartography, but also in other more surprising corners of the discipline such as literary cartography (Rossetto, 2013) and cinematic cartography (Roberts, 2012a)....
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...The idea that maps cannot be divorced from the practices, interests and understandings of their makers and users has already been explored (see, for instance, Turnbull, 1989), and can be seen as self-evident in disciplines such as anthropology or ethnography (Roberts, 2012b)....
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TL;DR: The Humanities Special Issue on Deep Mapping as mentioned in this paper explores the broad-ranging nature of perspectives and practices that fall within the "undisciplined" interdisciplinary domain of spatial humanities and argues that what deep mapping "is" cannot be reduced to the otherwise a-spatial and a-temporal fixity of the "deep map".
Abstract: This paper provides an introduction to the Humanities Special Issue on “Deep Mapping”. It sets out the rationale for the collection and explores the broad-ranging nature of perspectives and practices that fall within the “undisciplined” interdisciplinary domain of spatial humanities. Sketching a cross-current of ideas that have begun to coalesce around the concept of “deep mapping”, the paper argues that rather than attempting to outline a set of defining characteristics and “deep” cartographic features, a more instructive approach is to pay closer attention to the multivalent ways deep mapping is performatively put to work. Casting a critical and reflexive gaze over the developing discourse of deep mapping, it is argued that what deep mapping “is” cannot be reduced to the otherwise a-spatial and a-temporal fixity of the “deep map”. In this respect, as an undisciplined survey of this increasing expansive field of study and practice, the paper explores the ways in which deep mapping can engage broader discussion around questions of spatial anthropology.
34 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the connection between Cartography and Otherness, and intersected map and visual studies with the question of racial/ethnic identity, with the aim of making arguments through images, a visual/verbal text is staged to reflect on the map-Other connection in past and present times.
Abstract: This article explores the connection between Cartography and Otherness, and intersects map and visual studies with the question of racial/ethnic identity. With the aim of making arguments through images, a visual/verbal text is staged to reflect on the ‘Map-Other’ connection in past and present times. Inspired by the epistemological turn from representation towards practice currently experienced within map theory, the article interrogates the various creative ways in which art, advertising, public communication and related fields enable post-representational ways of portraying maps. Public visual images of cartography can be read not only as an exposure of the firm, ideological meaning of maps, but also as illustrations of how maps work as shared, embodied and empowering objects. The treatment of maps as socialised, performed and relational thereby results in an involvement of Others as protagonists rather than subjects.
15 citations
Cites background from "Cinematic Cartography: Projecting P..."
...Within the emerging field of interest on maps in movies (Conley, 2006; Roberts, 2012), a specific focus on various declination of Otherness should indeed be taken into consideration....
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...(Conley, 2006; Roberts, 2012), a specific focus on various declination of Otherness should indeed be taken into consideration....
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TL;DR: The authors examined the use of landscape in the Norwegian series Occupied (2015-2020) and Nobel (2016) and examined the ways in which cityscapes and panoramas of the natural environment are employed as affective, as well as aesthetic tools for storytelling within a geopolitically inflected framework.
Abstract: Abstract Focusing on the use of landscape in the Norwegian series Occupied (2015–2020) and Nobel (2016), this article examines the ways in which cityscapes and panoramas of the natural environment are employed as affective, as well as aesthetic tools for storytelling within a geopolitically inflected framework. Drawing on literature from popular geopolitics, geocriticism, and visual politics, my analysis interrogates the ways in which geopolitical codes and visions manifest via televisual fiction, reflecting a variety of insecurities associated with Norway's current position in world affairs, as well as contemporary challenges to Norwegian national identity. This article also discusses how these two series have adapted key geovisual elements of the what I deem the “near Nordic Noir” style to focus more explicitly on geopolitical questions, linking Occupied and Nobel to other geopolitically inflected series from Nordic Europe.
12 citations
Cites background from "Cinematic Cartography: Projecting P..."
...While the study of landscape in television series in still in its ascendancy, the importance of landscape in cinema is well established (cf. DeLue & Elkins, 2008; Harper & Rayner, 2010; Lefebvre, 2007b; Mitchell, 2002; Roberts, 2012b)....
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References
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TL;DR: The postmodern heritage tourism market has matured and the contemporary preoccupation with an increasing number of topics from the past has resulted in the emergence of different criteria for defining and interpreting heritage in terms of popular images of preferred histories as mentioned in this paper.
184 citations
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01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the philosophical terrain of contemporary mapping and explore the reasons why there are a diverse constellation of map theories vying for attention and charting some significant ways in which maps have been recently theorized.
Abstract: Given the long history of map-making and its scientific and scholarly traditions
one might expect the study of cartography and mapping theory to be relatively
moribund pursuits with long established and static ways of thinking about
and creating maps. This, however, could not be further from the truth. As
historians of cartography have amply demonstrated, cartographic theory and
praxis has varied enormously across time and space, and especially in recent
years. As conceptions and philosophies of space and scientific endeavour
have shifted so has how people come to know and map the world.
Philosophical thought concerning the nature of maps is of importance
because it dictates how we think about, produce and use maps; it shapes our
assumptions about how we can know and measure the world, how maps
work, their techniques, aesthetics, ethics, ideology, what they tell us about
the world, the work they do in the world, and our capacity as humans to
engage in mapping. Mapping is epistemological but also deeply ontological
– it is both a way of thinking about the world, offering a framework for
knowledge, and a set of assertions about the world itself. This philosophical
distinction between the nature of the knowledge claims that mapping is able
to make, and the status of the practice and artefact itself, is intellectually
fundamental to any thinking about mapping.
In this opening chapter we explore the philosophical terrain of contemporary
cartography, setting out some of the reasons as to why there are a diverse
constellation of map theories vying for attention and charting some significant
ways in which maps have been recently theorized. It is certainly the case that maps are enjoying something of a renaissance in terms of their popularity,
particularly given the various new means of production and distribution.
New mapping technologies have gained the attention of industry, government
and to some extent the general public keen to capitalize on the growing
power, richness and flexibility of maps as organizational tools, modes of
analysis and, above all, compelling visual images with rhetorical power. It
is also the case that maps have become the centre of attention for a diverse
range of scholars from across the humanities and social sciences interested
in maps in-and-of-themselves and how maps can ontologically and epistemologically
inform other visual and representational modes of knowing and
praxis. From a scientific perspective, a growing number of researchers in
computer science and engineering are considering aspects of automation of
design, algorithmic efficiency, visualization technology and human interaction
in map production and consumption.
These initiatives have ensured that mapping theory over the past twenty
years has enjoyed a productive period of philosophical and practical
development and reflection. Rather than be exhaustive, our aim is to
demonstrate the vitality of present thinking and practice, drawing widely
from the literature and signposting relevant contributions among the essays
that follow. We start the chapter by first considering the dimensions across
which philosophical differences are constituted. We then detail how maps
have been theorized from within a representational approach, followed by
an examination of the ontological and epistemological challenges of postrepresentational
conceptions of mapping.
161 citations
"Cinematic Cartography: Projecting P..." refers background in this paper
...What it also draws attention to are the shifting spatialities of film as manifest across disciplinary fields and epistemological framings, illuminating, in the process, what Lefebvre (2003) refers to as the ‘blind fields’ that otherwise block channels of crossdisciplinary exchange between different practitioners and theorists of space....
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Book•
01 Jan 2008
131 citations