Land Use Poetics is a collaborative project between artists and researchers from Sweden, the United Kingdom and Germany. I am currently working on the design of a publication meant to document their work, to be finished by February. The image above is from one of the works exhibited in their show at Skissernas Museum in Lund last year. Read more about the project on their blog.
I am thinking about this project in terms of mapping, which is one of the main themes. Recently, there has been some interest in contextualised information graphics, as well as a graphic design Masters project by Peter Ørntoft on the subject. Currently, my own interest in maps derives from the concept of the map as a layering of information on a geographical base – a typical example of statistics in context. But instead of thinking about creating a context for data, I believe we must think of the data as creating its own context – it is not Google streetview that provides a different way of seeing our environment, it is Google streetview that is shaping our environment, just to name one example. We’re back to the same Borges quote about the map that grows to cover and replace the territory…
