The Solitude of Ravens

The Solitude of Ravens. Photographs by Masahisa Fukase. In the wake of his divorce in 1976, Masahisa Fukase saw by chance a picture of a flock of crows which crystallised images of solitude and death appropriate to his sombre mood at the time.

Fukase began to photograph crows in snow and at night, where the birds are either symbolic of death or have died themselves. The pattern of their black silhouettes in the sky resembles a cluster of brushstrokes in a traditional Japanese sumi-e calligraphic painting. Masahisa Fukase's Ravens series was to occupy him for ten years.

From the series 'Ravens', 1975-85 Gelatin-silver print 21.5 x 32.5cmF

Masahisa Fukase Shibuya, 1985gelatin silver print16 x 20"

A review on The Solitude of Ravens

via the space in between - who have this love for birds photography works by the artist

Fictional Realities

works by Jeremy Kidd "My current fascination with the drama of the modern urban scene has led to an awareness of the human need to create dramatic architectural monoliths. These structures appear to intentionally rival elements of the vast, majestic western American landscape; where monolithic rock formations and sweeping canyons create such a sense of awe. I experience a similar feeling standing in front of, or more often driving, around any number of American downtown skylines. It has become increasingly apparent as I manipulate images of buildings and elements within my photographic panoramas that I have a need to impose a subjective vision within my chosen scene and present an idealization of the viewing process. "

Fictional Realities; Crystal 2, 2005archival print on aluminum cut to profile image, 108" x 90"

works by Jeremy Kidd and here, and in artist's site

Re-Creating the Sun

Todd Siler Fractal Reactor: Re-Creating the Sun

Todd Siler, trained in both science and the visual arts, exhibit models and drawings derived from his studies and speculations on nuclear fusion reactor design. Delving into an area that science and technology so far have been unable to fully solve, Siler, in his new body of work, responds to one of the most monumental scientific challenges of the day: how to recreate the power of the sun on earth in order to provide a safe, readily available, environmentally friendly energy source, that is essentially inexhaustible. more

Thought Patterns

Thought Patterns by laura splan, are drawings inspired by neuroanatomical structures. Each was drawn with a fine pen using a small amount of blood collected from the artist’s fingertip as an ink-like medium.

They are a formal exploration of the elements of our body that tell us we sense pain or pleasure. We respond to these sensations in a way that we often have no control over. Bleeding itself is an involuntary response of sorts to the penetration of the skin.

The images evoke the complex psychological and physiological responses our body has to outside forces. The forms serve as visual metaphors for the extreme intricacy and delicate fragility of the human body.

via asci

Contemporary Chinese Art

Lu Shengzhong Landscape StudyInstallation, bookshelves, books2003

Chen Shaoxiong Collective Memory—Guangzhou Landscape Ⅱ2006. Works on Paper (Drawings, Watercolors etc.)

Shi Jinsong Sweet LifeSugar installation 2002

Liu Baomin

Extreme illusion no.16 2006 - oil on canvas 150 x 190 cm.

Focus

No.2 Photo- Transfer on Cotton, Human Hair, 180x 150cm,

A Flower Boy at the Roadside, Daqing Mountain, Inner- Mongolia Geltain Sliver Print, 46x 46cm, Edition 10, 37x 37cm, Edition 20, 1998

Liu Zheng - known mostly maybe for his Four Beauties series

A Mirage C-Print, 75x 100cm, Edition of 10, 2004 Cao Fei

The Dream of China transparent polyvinyl (PVC), embroidery with fishing thread, 170x 214x 30cm, 2005 Wang Jin

Chess Set Installation, 2006

Horizon No.11 C-Print, 45x 40cm, edtion of 5, 102x 112cm, edtion of 4, 2004 Zhang O

Staring at the Sea No.5 C-Print, 125x 165cm, Edition of 10 Weng Fen

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE - Landscapes of the Soul

For a quarter of a century, Seattle-based Phil Borges has traveled to remote parts of the world photographing people of vastly different backgrounds and cultures, actively working to raise awareness about numerous human rights issues. On exhibit at Andrew Smith Gallery are portraits taken in Tibet, Peru, the Amazon Basin, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Kenya.

Phil Borges, Yama 8, Lhasa, Tibet

embrace

EIKOH HOSOE

embrace 7

embrace 2

artist page

Artists Interview Artists

Sky Pape, a New York City-based artist, participates in the Artists Interview Artists Project. This project, one among few others by J.T. Kirkland- a 27-year-old high-tech consultant and emerging artist living in the metro Washington, D.C. area

Sky Pape responds to another artist's five questions (Douglas Witmer from Philadelphia). In order to participate, Sky had to provide five questions for some other artist to answer. The assigning of questions to artists is completely random.

here below are sampels of his art. to his page at this project

SKY PAPE Eclipse Series Sumi Ink on Okawara Paper, 200312"h x 16"w (approx)

Q: Do you aspire for your work to meet a need and, if so, do you have a name for that need? A: My work needs to be the best that I can make it. Acting as a mirror, it shows me things I wouldn’t readily see about myself. It helps me process information about the world around me, and serves as both outlet and buffer for my emotions. Through it, I am able to probe, ask questions, find some answers, articulate ideas, and in turn, it leads me forward by asking more questions. Making it nourishes my ongoing desire to learn something about being.

SKY PAPE Eclipse Series Sumi Ink on Okawara Paper, 200312"h x 16"w (approx)

SKY PAPE. Shiva , from the Silver Lining series, Graphite & milk paint on board, 40" x 40", 2001.

SKY PAPE. Behind the Seen. Odyssey, 36 3/4 "h x 48 5/8"w, Sumi Ink on Kozo paper

SKY PAPE. Untitled (line drawing), 20"h x 30"w, Ink on Lokta Paper

Logic of the Birds

The way of love is not a subtle argument.

The door there is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.

How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling, they're given wings.

Rumi

River Series

Naoya Hatakeyama: River Series, 1993-94

River Series (Detail)Artist Naoya HatakeyamaWork Date 1993-94Set of 9 images, Edition of 7Materials C-print mounted on aluminumSize h: 39 x w: 19 in / h: 100 x w: 49 cm

artist's gallery

Naoya Hatakeyama: River Series / Shadow, 2002 :

BIRDS

I do not know of birds,

I do not know history of the fire.

But I believe that my solitude must have wings.

Alejandra Pizarnik

Ralph Eugene Meatyard Untitled 1960 gelatin silver print via junk for code

Map of Time

"There is nothing as humbling as drawing, sketching, painting the human body. Young, old, middle aged it is such a thing of beauty and wonder. It is especially the older models who fill me with respect and admiration. Unclothed, naked for all to see, unable to deny with the exposure of their vulnerable bodies the map of time. Once I get over my own puritanical voyeurism I just love and am so grateful for the opportunity to work in such a forum." Mary Jean Mailloux, Canada photo by Andreas Horvath

pilar albarracín

Pilar ALBARRACÍN, Verónica, 2001 Cibachrome cm 156 x 120 Courtesy: Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid

About Beauty

Nothing is so conditional, let us say circumscribed, as our feeling for the beautiful. Anyone who tried to divorce it from man’s pleasure in himself would find the ground give way beneath him.

–Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1889

Contemporary Americans talk about the things they find beautiful, because they talk about them all the time, and when they do, they use the word ‘beautiful’ with consistency and precision in a very traditional way that dates back to the Renaissance and beyond that to Latin Antiquity. In this vernacular usage, the word ‘beautiful’ bears no metaphysical burden. It signifies our anxious pleasure at something that transcends the merely appropriate and asserts the relative value of that thing over other things of its kind. In everyday talk, the word usually occurs as an exclamation occasioned by the speaker’s involuntary positive response to an object or event in the external world, and, more often than not, these vocalizations are followed by conversation, by analysis and negotiation, agreement or dissent, coalition or faction. Herein lies the mystery. more

What Is Beauty, Anyway? by De Clarke

What is Beauty? Audio recording with Alexander Nehamas, Professor in the Humanities, Princeton University

A Test Making some observations on ... What is "beauty

TOUCH COMES

TOUCH COMES - D.H. LAWRENCE

Touch comes when the white mind sleeps and only then. Touch comes slowly, if ever; it seeps slowly up in the blood of men and women.

Soft slow sympathy of the blood in me, of the blood in thee rises and flushes insidiously over the conscious personality of each of us, and covers us with a soft one warmth, and a generous kindled togetherness, so we go into each other as tides flow under a moon they do not know.

Personalities exist apart; and personal intimacy has no heart. Touch is of the blood uncontaminated, the unmental flood.

When again in us the soft blood softly flows together towards touch, then this delirious day of the mental welter and belter will be passing away, we shall cease to fuss.

Bill Henson Untitled 1994 / 95 typc C photograph, adhesive tape, pins, glassine 200.1 × 244.5cm

writing from within

Walter Benjamin in 'A Berlin Childhood.'

"One knew of places in ancient Greece where the way led down into the underworld. Our waking existence likewise is a land which, at certain hidden points, leads down into the underworld - land full of inconspicuous places from which dreams arise. All day long, suspecting nothing, we pass them by, but no sooner has sleep come than we are groping our way back to lose ourselves in the dark corridors. By day, the labyrinth of urban dwelling resembles consciousness; the arcades issue unremarked onto the streets. At night, however, under the tenebrous mass of the houses, their denser darkness protrudes like a threat, and the nocturnal pedestrian hurries past - unless, that is, we have emboldened him to turn into a narrow lane." via junkforcode

Duke Of Prunes

by Frank Zappa

A moon beam through the prune In June

Reveals your chest I see your lovely beans

And in that magic go-kart I bite your neck

The cheese I have for you, my dear

Is real and very new

A moon beam through the prune In June

Reveals your chest I see your lovely beans

And in that magic go-kart I bite your neck

The love I have for you, my dear

Is real and very new

Prune! (pa-da-dah!)

If it is a real prune Knows no cheese

(cheeky chanky, cheeky chanky)

And stands (Oh no!)

Taller or softer than any tree (or bush)

And I know The love I have for you

Will grow and grow And grow, I think

And so my love I offer you

A love that is strong A prune that is true

Lalalalalala...lalalalalaaa

My darling, you mean so very much to me,

I love you so deeply

It just makes me...

Duke, duke, duke, duke of prunes, prunes, prunes

I'll never forget you darling...

And you'll be my duchess, my duchess of prunes

A moon beam through the prune In June

Reveals your chest I see your lovely beans

And in that magic go-kart I bite your neck

The cheese I have for you, my dear

Is real and very new

(New cheese)

Prunes! (pa-da-dah!)

If they are fresh prunes Knows no

(cheeky chanky, cheeky chanky)

And they just lay there

Tell me and sing me and just if I don't know

And I know I think The love I have for you

Will never end (well maybe)

And so my love, I offer you

A love that is strong A prune that is true

This is the exciting part

This is like the Supremes, see the way it builds up...

Baby, baby, baby.

My prune is yours my love,

My cheese for you,

My baby prunes, my baby prunes, my baby prunes,

My baby prunes, my baby prunes, my baby prunes,

Oh baby prunes.

Cheesy, cheesy.

The Mythology of the Inner World

"The idea that our bodies are geographic worlds, came to me one day while I was stretching. I was sitting on one of my art boards, and stretched over my legs, I admired their shape, and decided to trace them. After tracing the shapes of my legs, I looked at the shape and thought it would make an interesting starting point for an art piece. That first tracing turned into a bird! It was that moment that I realized my body was an entire world, with landscapes and stories that wanted to communicate. I eagerly mapped my entire body to discover its hidden world and magical stories. These images became known as landscapes of ‘The Mythology of the Inner World’. Each image has been derived from the body, and represents the ‘Inner World’. "

These life-size collages were created using the body mapping process

Laura Hollick. Inner world

familiar territory

Some of the works by jodi green

road map lithograph, linocut and cotton thread2005 24 x 75 inches

familiar territory 1 monoprint, woodcut and linocut, 2006 18 x 24 inches

Interesting works in progress of hers include taking maps into her figurative work can be seen here

first atlas in Hebrew

This is the first atlas in the Hebrew language and a landmark of Judaica. Created by a teacher to help students understand Old Testament texts, it contains five maps.

Jakob Auspitz. Hungarian, fl. ca. 1817 [The Journeys of the Israelites Before They Passed The Jordan] Copper engraving, hand-colored, 16 x 20.5cm

the sons of Noah dispersed among the three continents. via

The Production of space

A visual essay on space, photography, archaeology - stressing how our experience of place is always prosthetic - mediated by instruments and by bodies that are not coincident with our sense of ego or self. [Link to the beginning of the series] and for more Entries

Maps and Legends

A few quotes from michael chabon (who's writing i simply love) essay on his childhood experience of moving in to a bran new city, a city that was a vision of a group of "colonists of a dream"

"...Childhood, at its best, is a perpetual adventure, in the truest sense of that overtaxed word: a setting forth into trackless lands that might have come to existence the instant before you first laid eyes on them. How fortunate I was to be handed, at such an early age, a map to steer by, however provisional, a map furthermore ornamented with a complex nomenclature of allusions drawn from the poems, novels and stories of mysterious men named Faulkner, Hemingway, Frost, Hawthorne, and Fitzgerald! Those names, that adventure, are with me still, every time I sit down at the keyboard to sail off, clutching some dubious map or other, into terra incognita..."

"...The power of maps to fire the imagination is well known. And, as Conrad’s Marlow observed, there is no map so seductive as the one, like the flag-colored schoolroom map of Africa that doomed him to his forlorn quest, marked by doubts and conjectures, by the romantic blank of unexplored territory. The map of Columbia I took home from that first visit was like that. The Plan dictated that the Town be divided into sub-units to be called Villages, each Village in turn divided into Neighborhoods. These Villages had all been laid out and named, and were present on and defined by the map. Many of the Neighborhoods, too, had been drawn in, along with streets and the network of bicycle paths that knit the town together. But there were large areas of the map that, apart from the Village name, were entirely empty, conjectural–nonexistent, in fact." I spent hours poring over that map, long before my family ever moved into the house that we eventually bought, with that V.A. loan, at 5179 Eliots Oak Road, in the neighborhood of Longfellow, in the Village of Harper’s Choice. To me the remarkable thing about those names was not their oddity but the simple fact that most of them referred to locations that did not exist. They were like magic spells, each one calibrated to call into being one particular stretch of blacktop, sidewalk and lawn, and no other. In time–I witnessed it with my own eyes, month by month, year by year–the street demanded by the formula "Darkbush Terrace" or "Night Roost" would churn up out of the Maryland mud and clay, begin to sprout houses, trees, a tidy blue-and-white identifying sign. It was a powerful demonstration to me of the incantatory power of names and naming..."

Yehudit Sasportas

at the barbara davis gallery

GPS maps

Global Positioning System - GPS Drawing Digital mark-making with satellite navigation technology an on going project by Jeremy Wood

"The work is rooted in an interest in the processes and methodologies in the field of drawing. GPS drawings are exhibited as printed editions and sculptures as part of ongoing research into writing over the earth and drawing with ourselves as we move....The GPS maps are part of ongoing research into personal cartography.

The idea of using GPS as a tool to draw with grew from recording the holding-pattern of a commercial airline flight from Berlin to London in October 2000. It has since been developed to incorporate the recording of all my trajectories as a digital trail. Recent work includes the presentation of my tracks as cartographic journals in a study of my movements over the past few years." read more, and makingmaps as well.

"...The raw GPS data is the material for digital and physical representation. The drawing takes place as and when one is being recorded by the GPS. We draw with ourselves as we move and map our experiences along the way...The project considers our travels, from the trivial and the routine, via the special and the ordeal. The ways in which we approach and treat our travels can reveal a great deal about us. The qualities of our tracks, like the traces drawn by a pen, are determined by our movements and expressions. "

The GPS maps were made to measure travels and tracks and the experiments show results from unscrupulous tests.

Here are some of the experiments shown at the site:

Hackney Football

Location: Hackney Marsh, London, UK. Track Length: 18.6 km Each football pitch takes aproximatley twelve minutes to trace around the chalk markings with a single line.

Location: Trap Grounds in Oxford

The purpose of this commission was to calculate the accessible area of the Trap Grounds in Oxford. A map was produced by walking around the six acre site with hand-held GPS receivers.

Amongst the GPS tracks found on the site are the tracings of historic and geographic features on foot, algorithmic plotting, crosshatching on a lawnmower, paddleboat doodling, and scribbling in the sky.

"The GPS maps are part of ongoing research into personal cartography. I record most of my movements with GPS and compile them to create visual journals. The ways around my routine routes have become increasingly elaborate." jeremy wood Phoenix Space Invaders Arizona, USA. 01/2006

The drawing below is of the final moments of a game of Atari Space Invaders. It was made over two days and is composed of 100 miles of GPS tracks recorded in a rented car.

Download Google Earth File from Google Earth Community

View more

Deep Mapping

"Reflecting eighteenth century antiquarian approaches to place, which included history, folklore, natural history and hearsay, the deep map attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might ever want to say about a place …"

Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks, Theatre/Archaeology - online publication (in pdf)

Michael Shanks, Bamburgh, Northumberland Deep map refers to an emerging practical method of intensive topographical exploration, popularised by author William Least Heat-Moon with his book PrairyErth: A Deep Map. (1991). A deep map work most often takes the form of engaged documentary writing of literary quality; although it can equally well be done in long-form on radio and does not preclude the combination of writing with photography and illustration. Its subject is a particular place, usually quite small and limited, and usually rural. Some call the approach 'vertical travel writing', while others compare it to the eclectic approaches of 18th & early 19th century antiquarian topographers or to the psychogeographic excursions of the early Situationist International. However, a deep map goes beyond simple landscape/history-based topographical writing - to include and interweave autobiography, archeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weathers, interviews, natural history, science & intuition. In its best form, the resulting work arrives at a subtle, multilayered and 'deep' map of a small area of the earth. In North America it is a method now often claimed by those interested in bioregionalism. The best known U.S. examples are Wallace Stegner's Wolf Willow (1962) and William Least Heat-Moon's PrairyErth (1991). In Britain it is used by those who deploy the terms 'spirit of place' and 'local distinctiveness'. BBC Radio 4 has recently undertaken several series of radio documentaries that are deep maps. These are inspired by the 'sense of place' work of the Common Ground organisation. Michael Shanks, Dunstanburgh more from chorography. more projects of Michael Shanks

Optical paper folding

From a very interesting site- dataisnature view gallery

Trying to silence the moon

That big, bright, not-quite-full moon was in full flow last night, saying things I really did not want to hear! There all night, refusing to let me go - the perforated inside of my head lit up with uncomfortable truths, all splattered across it like stars. Tough night — cruel, heartless moon. via WanderingScribe

Mapping the working coasts: using art to understand the waterfront

"The coast of Maine is undergoing a series of paradoxical changes. People are moving to the coast because of the lure of what it represents – a lifestyle of fishing, small communities, and the immediacy of the ocean. But in doing so, the viability of a coastal life interdependent with the working water is undermined. The existence of a complex dynamic historical relation between communities, both human and otherwise, that cross from land to sea and back is at risk of being lost. What is this complex actuality? What is this space of dynamic and contested alliances between human communities, the land, marine ecosystems, the ocean itself, global economic forces, and other forces? " mapping sessions: This ongoing collaboration involves a series of conversations and mapping sessions to investigate the existing condition sof the coasts and their potentialities.

Why is the sky blue

Why is the sky blue? It is a question children ask. Yet it also intrigued Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton, among many other legendary thinkers. As late as 1862, the great astronomer John Herschel called the colour and polarization of skylight "great standing enigmas." Even today, our perception of sky blue is little understood by laymen. go on reading...some interesting stuff in here {via thenonist} photo via Roi Kuper, No Escape from the Past, 2002 (colorprints 126 x 126 cm. / 80 x 80 cm.) edition of 5

moon words

from the Websters Unabridged Dictionary 1913:

Mooned (Mooned) a. Of or resembling the moon; symbolized by the moon. "Sharpening in mooned horns." "Mooned Ashtaroth." Milton.

Mooner (Moon"er) n. One who abstractedly wanders or gazes about, as if moonstruck. [R.] Dickens.

Moonery (Moon"er*y) n. Conduct of one who moons. [R.]

Moonet (Moon"et) n. A little moon. [R.] Bp. Hall.

Moon-eye (Moon"-eye`) n.

1. A eye affected by the moon; also, a disease in the eye of a horse.

2. (Zoצl.) (a) Any species of American fresh-water fishes of the genus Hyodon, esp. H. tergisus of the Great Lakes and adjacent waters. (b) The cisco.

Moon-eyed (Moon"-eyed`) a. Having eyes affected by the moon; moonblind; dim-eyed; purblind.

Moon-faced (Moon"-faced`) a. Having a round, full face.

Moonfish (Moon"fish`) n. (Zoצl.) (a) An American marine fish (Vomer setipennis); — called also bluntnosed shiner, horsefish, and sunfish. (b) A broad, thin, silvery marine fish (Selene vomer); — called also lookdown, and silver moonfish. (c) The mola. See Sunfish, 1.

Moonflower (Moon"flow`er) n. (Bot.) (a) The oxeye daisy; — called also moon daisy. (b) A kind of morning glory (Ipomœa Bona-nox) with large white flowers opening at night.

Moong (Moong) n. (Bot.) Same as Mung.

Moonglade (Moon"glade`) n. The bright reflection of the moon's light on an expanse of water. [Poetic]

Moonie (Moo"nie) n. (Zoצl.) The European goldcrest.

Moonish (Moon"ish) a. Like the moon; variable.

Being but a moonish youth.

Shak.

Moonless (Moon"less), a. Being without a moon or moonlight.

Moonlight (Moon`light`) n. The light of the moon. — a. Occurring during or by moonlight; characterized by moonlight.

Moonling (Moon"ling) n. A simpleton; a lunatic. [Obs.]

Moonlit (Moon"lit`) a. Illumined by the moon. "The moonlit sea." Moore. "Moonlit dells." Lowell.

Moonraker (Moon"rak`er) n. (Naut.) Same as Moonsail.

Moonrise (Moon"rise`) n. The rising of the moon above the horizon; also, the time of its rising.

Moonsail (Moon"sail`) n. (Naut.) A sail sometimes carried in light winds, above a skysail. R. H. Dana, Jr.

Moonseed (Moon"seed`) n. (Bot.) A climbing plant of the genus Menispermum; — so called from the crescentlike form of the seeds.

Moonset (Moon"set`) n. The descent of the moon below the horizon; also, the time when the moon sets.

Moonshee (Moon"shee) n. [Hind. munishi, fr. Ar. munishi a writer, author, secretary, tutor.] A Mohammedan professor or teacher of language. [India]

Moonshine (Moon"shine`) n.

1. The light of the moon.

2. Hence, show without substance or reality.

3. A month. [R.] Shak.

4. A preparation of eggs for food. [Obs.]

Moonshine (Moon"shine`), a. Moonlight. [R.] Clarendon.

Moonshiner (Moon"shin`er) n. A person engaged in illicit distilling; — so called because the work is largely done at night. [Cant, U.S.]

Moonshiny (Moon"shin`y) a. Moonlight. [Colloq.]

I went to see them in a moonshiny night.

Addison.

Moonstone (Moon"stone`) n. (Min.) A nearly pellucid variety of feldspar, showing pearly or opaline reflections from within. It is used as a gem. The best specimens come from Ceylon.

Moonstricken (Moon"strick`en) a. See Moonstruck.

Moonstruck (Moon"struck`) a.

1. Mentally affected or deranged by the supposed influence of the moon; lunatic.

2. Produced by the supposed influence of the moon. "Moonstruck madness." Milton.

3. Made sick by the supposed influence of the moon, as a human being; made unsuitable for food, as fishes, by such supposed influence.

Moonwort (Moon"wort`) n. (Bot.) (a) The herb lunary or honesty. See Honesty. (b) Any fern of the genus Botrychium, esp. B. Lunaria; — so named from the crescent-shaped segments of its frond.

Moony (Moon"y) a.

1. Of or pertaining to the moon.

Soft and pale as the moony beam.

J. R. Drake.

2. Furnished with a moon; bearing a crescent.

But soon the miscreant moony host Before the victor cross shall fly.

Fenton.

3. Silly; weakly sentimental. [Colloq.] G. Eliot.

*

"The map is not the territory"

SELECTIONS FOR READING FOR MAPS FREAKS: "Maps are never value-free images; except in the narrowest Euclidean sense they are not in themselves either true or false. Both in the selectivity of their content and in their signs and styles of representation, maps are a way of conceiving, articulating and structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon sets of social relations. By accepting such premises it becomes easier to see how appropriate they are to manipulation by the powerful in society." Harley. J. B. "Maps, Knowledge, and Power," The Iconography of Landscape, ed. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994. The Map is not the Territory by Claudio Gatti "In the nineteenth century, as maps became further institutionalised and linked to the growth of geography as a discipline, their power effects are again manifest in the continuing tide of European imperialism. The scramble for Africa, in which the European powers fragmented the identity of indigenous territorial organisation, has become almost a textbook example of these effects. And in our own century, in the British partition of India in 1947, we can see how the stroke of a pen across a map could determine the lives and deaths of millions of people. There are innumerable contexts in which maps became the currency of political 'bargains', leases, partitions, sales, and treaties struck over colonial territory and, once made permanent in the image, these maps more than often acquired the force of law in the landscape." J. B. Harley (283) "Map knowledge allows the conduct of warfare by remote control so that, we may speculate, killing is that more easily contemplated. Military maps not only facilitate the technical conduct of warfare, but also palliate the sense of guilt which arises from its conduct: the silent lines of the paper landscape foster the notion of socially empty space." (284) . . . . "Decisions about the exercise of power are removed from the realm of immediate face-to-face contacts." (303) J. B. Harley Michele Turre - map of Cambridge and its Watershed "Eurocentrism, like Renaissance perspectives in painting, envisions the world from a single privileged point. . . . Eurocentrism bifurcates the world into the "West and the Rest" and organizes everyday language into binaristic heirarchies implicitly flattering to Europe: our 'nations,' their 'tribes'; our 'religions,' their 'superstitions'; our 'culture,' their 'folklore'; our 'art,' their 'artifacts'; our 'demonstrations,' their 'riots'; our 'defense,' their 'terrorism.' " Shohat, Ella and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism. Routledge. London and New York, 1994. p.2 "Maps made it easy for European states to carve up Africa and other heathen lands, to lay claim to land and rsources, and to ignore existing social and political structure. Knowledge is power and crude explorers' maps made possible treaties between nations with conflicting claims. That maps drawn up by diplomats and generals became a political reality lends an unintended irony to the aphorism that the pen is mightier than the sword." Monmonier, Mark. How to Lie with Maps. University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London, 1991. "Aboriginal maps can only be properly read or understood by the initiated, since some of the information they contain is secret. This secrecy concerns the ways in which the map is linked to the whole body of knowledge that constitutes Aboriginal culture. For Aborigines, the acquisition of knowledge is a slow ritualized process of becoming initiated in the power-knowledge network, essentially a process open only to those who have passed through the earlier stages. By contrast, the Western knowledge system has the appearance of being open to all, in that nothing is secret. . . . In the Western tradition the way to imbue a claim with authority is to attempt to eradicate all signs of its local, contingent, social and individual production." "In the light of these considerations we should perhaps recognize that all maps, and indeed all representations, can be related to experience and instead of rating them in terms of accuracy or scienticity we should consider only their "workability" -- how successful they are in achieving the aims for which they were drawn. . . ." David Turnbull in Denis Wood, The Power of MapsThe Guldford Press. New York and London, 1992. p.40.