by Daniel Beech, Aberystwyth University

1. Mapping
the Global GIS AS AN ARTISTIC MEDIUM
Village
Daniel Beech
Institute of Geography and
Earth Science
Aberystwyth University
dib8@aber.ac.uk

2. Mapping
the Global CONTENT
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• WHAT IS ART?
• THE POTENTIAL OF A CREATIVE GIS
• EXAMPLES OF ART/SCIENCE ENGAGEMENT
• CURRENT RESEARCH
• CONCLUSIONS

3. Mapping
the Global
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PHD thesis: The Potential of Volcanic
Landscape Visualisation:
Performing the Gap
Between the Known and the Unknown

4. What is Art?
Mapping
the Global
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•“Art is … an arrangement of
conditions intended to be capable of
affording an aesthetic experience”
(Davies, 2005).
•Art is often ambiguous in content and
visceral in form: it is not informational,
but is instead a means of stimulating
emotional as well as intellectual
responses.

5. Mapping
E.g. The Sublime
the Global
Village Edmund Burke
• Sublime is the feeling of wonder and horror when
confronted with the vastness and awefulness of
nature.
Immanuel Kant
• The sublime is a pleasure felt in the powers of the
human imagination, as it seeks to make sense of
the formlessness and boundlessness of nature.
More specific concepts
•William Wordsworth – Romanticism and the Sublime
•Barbara Claire Freeman – Feminine Sublime
• David Nye – Technological Sublime

6. Mapping
GIS and the Art/Science Binary
the Global
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•Geographers such as Dan Sui have challenged C. P. Snow’s famous
notion of the “Two Cultures,” Science & Art, using GIS as an
example.
• In terms of content, GIS creates new ways of visualising objects,
processes, ideas and behaviours that are capable of mobilising specific
emotions, as well as a creative intellectual discourse.
• As a medium, GIS merges quantitative, locative information with an
embodied process of visual literacy: we learn to present data for the
eye and the hand to make sense of an navigate.

7. Mapping
Why are Artists Interested in GIS?
the Global
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•GIS encourages synergy and an interdisciplinarity.
• GIS can generate unlimited visualisations of a place, region or planet,
allowing for an experimental artistic process to emerge.
• Interactivity allows for more user-orientated artworks to be created
and re-made.

8. A Creative GIS?
Mapping
the Global
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• Creative GIS has focused on the overlaying and combining/correlating
of variables, as well as the interfacing and interpolation of GIS
modelling packages.
• GIS software exemplifying this process includes:
TerraView - handles vector and raster data in geo-relational databases.
Capaware - creates artistic architecture for graphical visualization.
Chameleon – imagines new cityscapes that recreate virtual
environments.

9. Mapping David Endelman, LINE DROPS (1997)
the Global
Village • “As part of my art, I want to share with others what I see and
experience as a cartographer. In addition, I am curious about how
others view the world in which they live. Therefore, I want my art to be
accessible and interactive. GIS as an art form is relevant to me as an
artist because it is a tool of our time that produces a sense of our time
and place”.

10. Mapping David Endelman, LINE DROPS (1997)
the Global •Lines depict underground piping in Huntington Beach, California.
Village
• The image “displays a landscape of the unseen” (Endelman, 1999)
through visual data and geological modelling software (GIS).
• Line thickness can be enhanced and manipulated through Arc/Info.
• The image is vague and abstract, illustrating a disconnect between GIS
and reality.
• Human connotations are illustrated through the portrayal of the
hidden and the unknown.

11. Mapping Christian Nold, BIO MAPPING (2004)
the Global
Village • “Bio Mapping … explores new ways that
we as individuals can make use of the
information we can gather about our own
bodies. Instead of security technologies that
are designed to control our behaviour, this
project envisages new tools that allows
people to selectively share and interpret
their own bio data”.
• “… allows the wearer to record their
Galvanic Skin Response (GSR), which is a
simple indicator of emotional arousal in
conjunction with their geographical
location. This can be used to plot a map
that highlights point of high and low
arousal. By sharing this data we can
construct maps that visualise where we as a
community feel stressed and excited”.

12. Mapping Christian Nold, BIO MAPPING (2004)
the Global
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•GIS has enabled artists and cartographers to allow people to map
themselves and their biofunctions.
• Data used is based upon the human body and its senses; the virtual
environment is shaped by the arrangement and motion of the being.
• The data is biological and emotional, creating new relations between
individual and technology
• The process of mapping also highlights otherwise unconscious
emotional states.

13. Mapping Petra Gemeinboeck, Imagined
the Global
Village Geographies 02: Urban Fiction (2012)
• “Petra Gemeinboeck… is particularly interested in the intersections
between physical and virtual spaces… IG 02: Urban Fiction combines
user demographic data and user geographical data (GIS) with the
movements of the user (participants) within the landscape”.
• The sense of unpredictability questions the extent to which the
artwork is bounded, hinting at the limitless spread of the Kantian
sublime.

14. Mapping Petra Gemeinboeck, Imagined
the Global
Village Geographies 02: Urban Fiction (2012)
• “Urban Fiction” emphasises the role played by networking in the
contemporary uses of Smartphones.
• There is an awareness of location and motion, highlighting the themes
of fluidity and mobility in current GIS-based artwork.
• The urban becomes reconfigured through the artwork’s participatory
usage, creating unpredictability in landscapes formation.
• Gemeinboeck acknowledges the role
played by territory but the work effectively
portrays landscape as individually
sculpted.

15. Mapping Brian Brush, TERRITORIES AMMAN
the Global (2009)
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• “The resulting texture is a simulation or expression of the projective
mental space that is invisible, yet pervasive in the connected experience
between people, culture, activity, and the city.”
• “These assemblages represent an expression of
proximal influence by nearby human activity and
certain territorial patterns emerge.”

16. Mapping Brian Brush, TERRITORIES AMMAN
the Global (2009)
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• GIS manipulation can create a
sublime digital texture that
places social-spatial
characteristics in a virtual
positions that produces
coloured assemblages.
• Essentially, the view of
Amman is the same but GIS
binaries breed representational
variance and diversity. Spatial
dimensions are permeated and
aesthetics are visually enhanced.

17. Mapping Marko Peljhan, MAKROLAB (1997-
the Global 2007)
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• “It is a project that will research isolation strategies: how to isolate
oneself from society to reflect and see this society better. …in an
isolated and insulated environment with completely open possibilities
of communication and monitoring of social events, but physically
isolated, can provide a much faster, further and more efficient 'call' for
social evolution.”
• “This strategy is temporary. It's a come and go strategy. It is not
something that you do once and then you are isolated …you must have
the means and the possibility to transfer the result of this reflection
back into society, whatever that result is.”

18. Mapping Marko Peljhan, MAKROLAB (1997-
the Global 2007)
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• The MAKROLAB uses GIS in order to gather and map data in remote
and almost inhospitable environments.
• The initiative holistically encompasses art, science and culture through
the creation of a dynamic virtual space.
• The mobile laboratory overturns the top-down gaze of GIS
practitioners, and encourages the communication of findings between
indigenous communities across Alaska and Scandinavia, as well as
‘marginal’ communities in Scotland.

19. Mapping The Changing Palette of Art
the Global
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• Art is important to society for reasons beyond simply inspiration and
entertainment; art extends into sociological and technological
debates.
• Locative art tackles the use of GIS in nation-building and
surveillance, focussing on the freedom and representation of the
individual within the wider community and national level society.
• The human becomes intertwined with both technology and its
products; artists use GIS to create bodily, humanistic experiences.
• Artists are actively changing imagined and lived spaces; this creates a
platform for interaction.

20. Mapping Visualising the Cleveland Volcano
the Global
Village • Research draws on art/GIS genre to note
how representations of this extreme
landscape have a series of aesthetic
dimensions.
• GIS data sources for Cleveland include
the United States Geological Survey
(USGS) and the Alaska Volcanic
Observatory (AVO).
• GIS software includes Google Earth,
Global Mapper and ARC-GIS.

21. Mapping
Visualising the Cleveland Volcano
the Global
Village • Visualisations enhance particular ideas,
such as the ‘top-down’ gaze. Viewers
gain a position of power, illustrating
mastery.
• The image is bounded, hiding the
external setting and hints of the region’s
complex geopolitical past.
• The mobility of the viewer gives them
an additional feeling of mastery. This is
a multifaceted and wholly embodied
gaze; prevalent through the active
exploration of the landscape.

22. Mapping
Visualising the Cleveland Volcano
the Global • The top image echoes Burke’s sublime,
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adding aesthetic spectacle and drama to
the volcanic setting.
• The symmetrical topography of
Cleveland draws the eye to the centre of
the image, actively involving the viewer
and drawing emotional attention to data
that was previously quantitative in form.
• The second image draws on the gothic;
the volcano is a distant, unknown
element.
• The iconographic fog and mist
manifests metaphorical undertones that
hint at a foreboding horror.

23. Mapping Emerging Questions
the Global
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Does GIS lend itself to particular aesthetic concerns such as the
sublime?
To what extent are artistic uses of GIS a matter of simply adopting
another tool?
Can artists influence future developments in GIS software?
How can the GIS community further engage the arts community?

24. THANK YOU
Mapping
the Global
Village
Please don’t hesitate to contact me regarding my
work at dib8@aber.ac.uk

25. REFERENCES
Mapping
• Burke, E. (1844), Of the Sublime and Beautiful, New York: Harper and Bros.
the Global
• Davies, S. (2005), ‘Definitions of Art’, in Berys Gaut and Dominic Mciver
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Lopez (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics, 2nd edition, London:
Routledge, pp. 227–40.
• Endelman, D. (1997), Line Drops, Computer Geoscience as Art exhibition,
The Bakersfield Museum of Art in Bakersfield, California, U.S.A.
• Eschner, S. (1998), "Computer Geoscience as Art.“, Bakersfield: Bakersfield
Museum of Art.
• Kant, I. (1911), Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, in J.C. Meredith, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
• www.2012.foss4g.org, Foss4g, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.aber.ac.uk, Aberystwyth University, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.archiplangineering.com, Arch I-Plan Art, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.artscatalyst.org, Arts Catalyst England, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.avo.alaska.edu, Alaska Volcanic Observatory, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.biomapping.net, Christian Nold, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.carlson-gis.com, Carlson GIS, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.capaware.org, Capaware Software, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.cyber-swift.com, Cyber Swift, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.earth.google.com, Google Earth, Accessed 20/05/2012.

26. REFERENCES
Mapping
•www.emotionalcartography.net/bio mapping emotion in social spaces- cities,
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Emotional Cartography by Christian Nold, Accessed 20/05/2012.
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• www.envsys.co.uk, Environment Systems, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.esri.com/software/arcgis, ESRI, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.geography.tamu.edu/profile/DSui, Dan Sui profile, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.gis.com/content/what-gis, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.gistec.com, GIS Technology, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.gisuser.com, GIS user, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.globalmapper.com, Global Mapper, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.impossiblegeographies.net, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.josephinebosma.com, Josephine Bosma, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.martacowordpress.com, Martaco World Press, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.monoskop.org/Marko_Peljhan, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.oup.com/us/catalog/philosophy, OUP, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.plato.stanford.edu/kantaesthetics, Plato, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.proceedings.esri.com, The Fine Art of Cartography, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.scientificamerican.com, C. P. Snow, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.seismopolite.com/, Seismopolite, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.terrawareproducts.com, Terraware, Accessed 14/04/2012.
• www.uenca.org/groundwater, UENCA, Accessed 20/05/2012.
• www.usgs.gov, US Geological Survey, Accessed 14/05/2012.
• www.victorianweb.org/philosophy, Accessed 20/05/2012.