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Terra Forma: A Book of Speculative Maps
Charting the exploration of an unknown world—our own—with a new cartography of living things rather than space available for conquest or colonization.
This book charts the exploration of an unknown our own. Just as Renaissance travelers set out to map the terra incognito of the New World, the mapmakers of Terra Forma have set out to rediscover the world that we think we know. They do this with a new kind of cartography that maps living things rather than space emptied of life and available to be conquered or colonized. The maps in Terra Forma lead us inward, not off into the distance, moving from the horizon line of conventional cartography to the thickness of the ground, from the global to the local.
Each map in Terra Forma is based on a specific territory or territories, and each tool, or model, creates a new focal point through which the territory is redrawn. The maps are “living maps,” always under construction, spaces where stories and situations unfold. They may map the Earth’s underside rather than its surface, suggest turning the layers of the Earth inside out, link the biological physiology of living inhabitants and the physiology of the land, or trace a journey oriented not by the Euclidean space of GPS but by points of life. These speculative visualizations can constitute the foundation for a new kind of atlas.
This book charts the exploration of an unknown our own. Just as Renaissance travelers set out to map the terra incognito of the New World, the mapmakers of Terra Forma have set out to rediscover the world that we think we know. They do this with a new kind of cartography that maps living things rather than space emptied of life and available to be conquered or colonized. The maps in Terra Forma lead us inward, not off into the distance, moving from the horizon line of conventional cartography to the thickness of the ground, from the global to the local.
Each map in Terra Forma is based on a specific territory or territories, and each tool, or model, creates a new focal point through which the territory is redrawn. The maps are “living maps,” always under construction, spaces where stories and situations unfold. They may map the Earth’s underside rather than its surface, suggest turning the layers of the Earth inside out, link the biological physiology of living inhabitants and the physiology of the land, or trace a journey oriented not by the Euclidean space of GPS but by points of life. These speculative visualizations can constitute the foundation for a new kind of atlas.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published February 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 12, 2024
An interesting book on diagrammatic, speculative cartography that is meant to help guide the reader (their intended audience is widespread, from scientists, researchers, and urban planners to citizens and activists) in creating a sense of spatiotemporality that does not specifically rely on traditional cartography or GPS. They do this by giving us tools that are intuitive to use via their reliance on fundamentally simple 2D geometries rendered at a comprehensible scale as opposed to the infinite 3D polygons and incomprehensible scales of most commonly used cartography systems today. They are reproducible in a wide variety of contexts, and likewise adaptable to meet a wide variety of needs based on the reader’s usage.
Like all books of speculative realism, this one too, in asking us to redefine and question the principles that we take for granted as structuring spacetime itself, offers us a myriad if not infinite potentialities to reorient or disorient ourselves in our contemporaneity.
Like all books of speculative realism, this one too, in asking us to redefine and question the principles that we take for granted as structuring spacetime itself, offers us a myriad if not infinite potentialities to reorient or disorient ourselves in our contemporaneity.
May 3, 2022
Ouvrage lu pour mon master. J'attendais de lui une remise en question des représentations communes d'un territoire, des cartes, des frontières, de l'habitabilité.
C'est réussi !
Grâce à 7 modèles, les autrices renversent et renouvellent notre façon de regarder et d'étudier un espace, notamment en remettant au centre les conséquences de l'humain, l'humain en tant qu'être modifiant son monde, et en redonnant au monde non-humain une place non négligeable. Les deux vivent ensemble, co évoluent, et il serait faux de continuer à représenter le monde de façon objective, avec un regard surplombant l'espace naturel, emprunt de cette idéologie d'exploitation et de conquête des ressources disponibles. Regard écologique également dans les derniers chapitres.
Très enrichissant
Cependant, il peut être ardu de comprendre les cartes finales. Les propositions de modèles sont bien expliquées, étape par étape. Mais arrivée à la fin de chaque chapitre et à la carte, je n'ai jamais bien compris tous les symboles. L'espace de base qu'on a l'habitude de se représenter devrait l'être pour pouvoir faire comparaison avec la nouvelle vision proposée.
C'est réussi !
Grâce à 7 modèles, les autrices renversent et renouvellent notre façon de regarder et d'étudier un espace, notamment en remettant au centre les conséquences de l'humain, l'humain en tant qu'être modifiant son monde, et en redonnant au monde non-humain une place non négligeable. Les deux vivent ensemble, co évoluent, et il serait faux de continuer à représenter le monde de façon objective, avec un regard surplombant l'espace naturel, emprunt de cette idéologie d'exploitation et de conquête des ressources disponibles. Regard écologique également dans les derniers chapitres.
Très enrichissant
Cependant, il peut être ardu de comprendre les cartes finales. Les propositions de modèles sont bien expliquées, étape par étape. Mais arrivée à la fin de chaque chapitre et à la carte, je n'ai jamais bien compris tous les symboles. L'espace de base qu'on a l'habitude de se représenter devrait l'être pour pouvoir faire comparaison avec la nouvelle vision proposée.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews