Vism.ag & Creative Maps Blog

This ad for Mercedes Benz is really intriguing how google maps vernacular infiltrates reality. Escape The Map



Its been out a while the ad and had meant to post sooner. It is intriguing because I imagine that a projection on the road with the street view would help with sat nav's as opposed to trying to glance to your right to see a sat nav. You could just stare at the street. Would be cool.

But from a mapping point of view I was interested as it mixes the hyper real through the vernacular of google maps with reality. Now from my experiences I had learnt that hyper real was associated with the postmodern and specifically baudrillard 'the map preceedes the territory'. Jean Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal.

Having looked at a recent paper by Sébastien Caquard, Cartography I: Mapping narrative cartography. See here: http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/06/0309132511423796

Sebastien points out an interesting view of the story map, this is the fictional representation, the story map as Sébastien Caquard puts it;

‘map is more interesting than the territory because it is an idealized simplification of a complex – and often depressing – reality. This resonates with the idea that in the postmodern world most of the time the hyper-real appears joyful beside the deterioration of the environment to which it refers (Westphal, 2007).’

See now this idea of the postmodern hyerreality being joyful is what I remember with Baudrillard and simulacra's, but I wasn't aware of the map is more intersting than the territory a point illustrated by the latest novel by Michel Houllebecq entitled La Carte et le Territoire (The Map and the Territory) (2010).

I'm not sure how we're supposed to weigh between Baudrillard or Houllebecq, but like how Sebastien says they follow with this idea of the joyful presentations of reality. Many of the these joyful selections that have been crowd sourced by google maps.

'Paraphrasing Houellebecq, in other words, ‘Google Maps are more interesting than the territory’.'

This leaves me very intrigued that the story maps that Google are providing are more interesting than reality, much in the repsect that this Escape the Map ad by Mercedes Benz particularly realises well.

It makes me want to visit, or at least try to read the videos / papers that transpire from this: Cartography & Narratives

Meanwhile, read more about the different perspectives on the map and the territory here

I have been trying to get Vism.ag/Vol 4  available in print away from P.O.Demand services and got decent prices too, but still trying to find investment to do a long enough run to realistically make it viable. But... I will try to get an ebook available of it soon and the reason I bring it up is that there are a few selections of work by Denis Wood in the online sample and there's a review of his book Everthing Sings: Maps for a Narrative Atlas that I'm sure will be of essential reading to cross reference with the thoughts of the Story Map and fictional cartography. (the word fictional still distracts me as google maps work on a degree of truth, they arent made up).

Anyhow, happy hols everyone and will try to get more posts up. In the mean time, follow @visualthinkmap on twitter for more of what I see, just less analysis.