bouncing thoughts

there's really a ton to go on in your post lizzie. i think those are some of the same questions being asked in relation to 'modern' and 'postmodern' maps.

-i agree that the material limitation of the page is a factor, but the theorists i'm reading are more concerned with the terms of representation on the page than its actual materiality. the difficulty of map 'projections', that is, accurately mapping a curved space onto a 2d space, has been around since the age of exploration, more than 500 years. there was never any contention over whether the earth was flat or not--that debate is a total modern fabrication.

so, globes have been around for nearly just as long, only they were a lot more expensive to make. but needless to say, deconstructing/altering materiality and dimensions of a map is a way for advancement. in terms of buckminster fuller's dymaxion map, it is a map that is both 2d and 3d. what's killer is not just being able to witness that dimensional transformation, but how the world is represented in the 2d version. not only is it a relatively accurate projection, but (1) the land mass of the world is represented as being nearly contiguous, rather than separated and (2) the 'center' of the map is no longer based on european trade routes. so whatever ideology existed in the format of early maps (which either had the west as center for biblical or economic reasons).

check out the map on the shower curtain that's in the sheldon street bathroom. it has the world represented, but it also contains the cosmos and the heavens. i don't know if it's even an actual map, but minca talks a lot about the 'metaphysics of representation'. we should consider the relationship between the view, the map, what the map physically represents, and what (ideologically) the cartographic representation of the physical space represents. how different is it that one map represents that proximity of god, and another represents colonial acquisitions?

one last bit:

minca also talks about the 'world as exhibition', which is a big keyword in postmodern theory (disneyland being the prime example). that is, a space does not reflect an ideology or represent the 'other' so much as exhibit it.

on trash-iotics:

i found an interesting, almost disturbing coincidence, thinking about the sci-li as exhibition (the first high rise library ever, btw, and considered to be an architectural failure). it's done in the 'brutalist' style, which i think speaks for itself.

a famous brutalist complex was the pruitt-igoe project. founded as a sort of low-income utopia, the project failed and was later (very symbolically) demolished.

and another complex by the same architect, symbolically built, symbolically destroyed? The WTC.