Dichotomies of the academic practice:
- Fieldwork (out-there, data acquisition in the field)
- Back in the academic environment (back-home, data interpretation and writing)
Between these two operates a series of translations: representational media that transforms "field" experience (a subjective performative event) into usable "data" (the historiographic operation). This fragmentation of the archaeological research in and of itself presents a vital problem. Let's address this in the beginning and at the end.
Webmoor article "a theoretical destabilization of both map and visual imagery"
What is a map?
- a transportable medium, removed from its context of production (field)
- a graphically coded information: with distinct pictorial conventions
- an itinerary (Medieval mappa mundi?)
- a utopic image of the world (Babylonian map of the world)
- a flattening of the real 'lived' world
- flattening of space
- flattening of time
MAP- as the authority to represent spatial realities on the ground, a direct correlate of the objective world. What are the pros and cons of such unquestioned use of the maps?
- Webmoor in this context, presents the discussion of the relationship between TEXT and IMAGE, and the reader's performance going back-and-forth between the two. While the text in this experience becomes more and more an interpretative mode of thinking, MAP-IMAGE approaches the empirical reality against which such subjective viewpoints discussed by the text are tested and pursued.
Transparency of the map: comparison to the Renaissance perspective.
Playing around with Google Earth, I found the following images and wanted to bring them up on Tuesday.
James
Diego Velázquez (or Velásquez) (1599-1660). Las Meninas (Maids of Honor) 1656-57; Museo del Prado, Madrid.
