What's in a map?
This digital art-based research project consists of an interactive map to explore resources on maps. The project includes many elements that have made me rethink the ideas of representation of the territory as well as the power of maps from their history to the possibilities for collective action.
version 1.0
I made the first version of this map in Spring 2024 during the Interactive Telecommunications Program/Interactive Media Arts (ITP/IMA) Project Fellowship.
The original idea for this visualization was to create a printed art with QR codes and a pixilated clickable version of the map. For this, I worked on Adobe Illustrator to create the image and then exported it as an SVG file. For the website, I worked with SVG code on HTML.
While creating the digital visualization, I started to think of the materiality of the QR codes for the printed version. In my application for ITP/IMA, I proposed creating a printed version of the same map with QR codes people would explore. However, during the fellowship, I started to re-think this materiality.
What’s in a map? includes a feminist perspective. Thus, I wondered how to materialize this perspective: QR codes in materiality related to social movements and feminist perspectives on mapmaking, so I thought of embroidered QR codes.
The textile idea made me wonder how the map could convey additional meanings representing more of the approach to map and territory I was reading about. Particularly, Indigenous women from the Americas have taught the local movements about the relationship between territory-body-land. Dressmaking is a way to include the body in the meaning and its relationship to the map.
From the many possibilities, I decided to use a corset because of its metaphoric closeness to maps. Corsets are instruments to create an aesthetic representation of the body by oppressing its true form. This is similar to what maps make to land.
For embroidery, I tried using an embroidery machine. However, I concluded that for my communicative goals, the hand-made cross-stitch would be more related to the uses of embroidery in social movements.
Dressmaking. To create the dress of v.1 I made the following decisions:
- Minimum number of stitches for the dress under the corset. I followed this YouTube tutorial to do so. Sewing less and by hand has been a political statement, for example, in India’s independence.
- A ready-to-use corset. Following Daniel Johnstson’s advice, I bought a corset to explore the concept I want to work with in v.1. I hope to create the corset from zero in a future version of the project. Getting a fast-fashion corset brought a layer of meaning, anyway, as this project came from a country where humans would need a visa to cross the border, but the products can come in very easily by demand.
- The process displayed. In this first version, I kept the dress with pins showing the process and planning required. Additionally, I only added a few QR codes as proof of concept. Due to time restrictions, I only created a part of Latin America in the dress, but in future versions, it would have the Americas as a single continent.
- The QR codes. During the fellowship at ITP/IMA, I tried embroidery machines for the codes. Finally, I returned to my original intention of creating the codes by hand. I used Stitch Fiddle, a digital resource that generates the pattern for cross-stitch. I prefer hand-embroidery for the social meaning of this way of communication in the social movements, and its relation to the meaning I pursue in my project.
Acknowledgments
- Interactive Telecommunications Program/Interactive Media Arts of New York University, for being home to this project during Spring 2024 via the ITP/IMA Project Fellowship.
- Daniel Johnston, ITP Production Mentor, for their support in exploring a textile version of the map.
- Geochicas, for welcoming me to learn about anti-patriarchal mapping and supporting me intellectually and emotionally while I learn about maps.
- Eduardo Reyes Delgado and Leandro Bello Delgado, for being my tech family to explore new challenges across years and projects.
- Jonathan Hanon, for supporting me with love and care when I go down into (yet another) rabbit hole mode.
- My mom, for being my first reference in dressmaking.