The Agency of Maps - Revealing the Invisible

Map as Story
I'm interested in how maps affect our perception of the landscape and our place in the world.
Like a realistic photograph, they are often perceived as representing a truthful, objective description of the places they include. But of course, they are selective in what they include and how they represent it, and they are the result of value-based decisions just like other man-made objects. 

The book, "How to Lie with Maps," by Mark Monmonier, gives a thorough tour through the many ways maps can mislead, whether by intention or not, by what they show and do not show, and how they show it. Despite his provocative title, he does not argue that maps are wrong to lie, but says, "Not only is it easy to lie with maps, it's essential." The actual, interconnected world is far too complex to be captured in any complete way in a map. By design, a map must select only some parts of the whole, and simplify or symbolize those parts in order to fulfill the map's purpose. The fact that a map is a designed visual story of the world, gives it risk of miscommunication, but also great utility and agency. What shall we do with this power?

River Journey Map, Full Spring Studio

Revealing the Invisible, Revealing the Personal
'Revealing the invisible' is one of the primary purposes for the map used at the beginning of River Journey, the current art-led environmental education project I'm leading in collaboration with River's Edge Academy charter high school. The invisible element that it reveals is the interconnected path of water to a place of specific meaning to the students, indicated on the picture by a dashed white line that shows where on the Mississippi they get their drinking water from, the path that water takes through pipes, lakes, and the water treatment plant, all the way to their own building, and then from the drain, through sanitary sewer, waste water treatment plant, back to the Mississippi River.

The map is used as a prop--a classic way to begin a journey by looking at a map of where you will travel. But the map is also used to tell a story of personal interconnection. Chances are low that the students have seen a map of water utilities before, even lower that they've seen one combining potable water lines and sewer lines (partly because they are managed by different organizations), and smaller yet, that they've seen a map that has filtered out the "noise" of the many interconnected pipes to highlight and make legible this unique path within the network that connects their own school to the river.