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In living colour

Workshop considers how maps can illustrate the world around us
October 12, 2010
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By Karen Herland

Source: Concordia Journal

Sébastien Caquard has been thinking about how movies translate onto maps, how pictures convey numbers and how data looks in full colour. The challenge is to find a common language across such different terms of reference. Caquard, who is currently teaching in Concordia's Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, developed those reflections last September in a workshop: “Mapping” Environmental Issues in the City: Arts and Cartographic Cross Perspectives. The two-day event brought about 15 artists and cartographers from around the world to represent environmental issues in the city.

As co-chair of the working group on “Art and Cartography” of the International Cartographic Association (ICA) Caquard researches how to convey information in two-dimensional, spatially-defined images. “I’m interested in a way to bring together artists and cartographers,” says Caquard on the combination of disciplines and practices.

He presented the challenge to his Advanced Geographic Information Systems class in winter 2010. As a group, the students decided to build a database to map environmental justice on the island of Montreal.

The class decided what information they needed to gather based on an initial literature review. “Even the database itself was complicated,” he recalls. Students had to think about what information they needed, how to get it and how to present it.

Eventually, they decided to gather data on health, air quality, noise, and industrial pollutants and to compare them with sociodemographic data such as income and visible minorities. Even that proved difficult as material was in numerous locations, and the information was not always easily translatable across scale, time period, units of measure, etc.

“The first thing we realized is that data is flawed,” recalls Aaron Baxter, who participated in the class and who presented his thoughts on the process at the workshop. He acknowledges that maintaining a constant, complete, reliable set of data is probably “utopic”.

Together, the class worked to present a coherent set of data on the web. And that’s when the fun began. A call went out inviting artists and cartographers to use the material to develop interesting ways of mapping these complex subjects.

The result was last month’s workshop where the 16 successful presenters shared their thoughts on the exercise and the results of their own work with the material. “People couldn’t just submit what they usually present,” explains Caquard. Although most people approached the project through the lens of their research interests, they had to work with the raw material provided by Caquard’s class.

That led to a lot of works-in-progress, but also a lot of time for discussion and reflection amongst a small group of people equally familiar with the subject matter. Caquard was impressed by the range of interpretations. “The artists were taking us onto the ground in the city, working with movement and sound in the street.”

Baxter enjoyed the workshop. “It was a way to bring arts and science together and unravel different approaches to the same questions.”

Caquard’s own research, funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, bridges the disciplines by combining filmmaking and cartography through the representation of geography in 500 contemporary Canadian films. Besides discovering interesting things about how Canada looks in film (for instance, not one Anglophone film in his selection references Montreal, while every single Quebec film does) he sees other areas for overlap. “Cinema has a lot to relay in terms of animated maps, framing, using sound and telling stories.”

Following the workshop, presenters continue to refine their projects. A book, and accompanying exhibition, are being planned for launch at the next ICA conference in July 2011.
 

Related links:
- Art and Cartography working group
- Department of Geography, Planning and environment
- Program for Mapping Montreal Workshop
- Arts and Cartography workshop: Mapping Environmental Issues in the City



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