Laura Plana Gracia (es)
Database Visualizations, Mapping and Cartography: Genealogy of Space. Visual Representation for Knowledge in Art

Visualization strategies of knowledge in art are affected by progress, history and evolution. The displacement from uniqueness vision to complex models are analysed by Jameson in Cognitive Mapping and Buckminster Fuller with the Dymaxion map. There are 3 main fields of research: DATABASE VISUALIZATION: displaying information and knowledge with 600 existing models. MAPPING: visualization of cyberspace flows, density flux of communication networks and mapping the net. CARTOGRAPHY: based in social mapping, locative media, tactical media and media activism

Bachelor in History of Art Barcelona. Master in Curating Media Art MECAD. Curated Cartographies of non-site Exhibition on Digital Art, Landscape and Open Social Media. Leonardo Scholarship at Media Art Histories. Editor at Database Virtual Art. Ph.D. Research on Visual Cultures and Digital Aesthetic

Art and technology awareness is used in new media as strategy since 1989 the Cold War end. It symbolise the Analogue to Digital system conversion and the end of industrial mode of production. It also implies the dominion of public social space under surveillance and the impact in landscapes, among others. Cartography is a system of visual representation of knowledge to display in exhibitions of contemporary art solving problems to society under value of ethics. Also it belongs to Genealogy of Space, a categorization initiated by Foucault with Panoptic and Heterotopia, which continues with non-site, Atopia, Distopia, Utopia, the permanent site of power, TAAZ Temporal Autonomous Zone and Borders. All physical or non-physical spaces are conceptualized in an embodied/disembodied effect on the subject. Psycogeography is another system of representation giving solutions as Heterocronos or Real Time, an approach to performance. The deconstruction in dada Objecthood and the meaning of surrealist images make contemporary Cinematic Visual Era understand what Tarkovsky in film Stalker synthesizes under the meaning of the cave, a manner of production Art in relation to society. Then, art turns into a visual representation of Knowledge and its strategies of visualization, representation and displaying are affected by progress, history and evolution. This implies the displacement from uniqueness vision (the plane earth in modern age) to complex models of visualizing (affected by NASA and aerospace) producing systems as video.art to net.art, that are representing, communicating and informing. The more significant contribution in that field of research is Frederich Jameson dealing with the Cognitive Map and how about visualizing information under matters of subjectivity and translation of meaning and also the codification and hermetism of the point of view that Buckminster Fuller tries to solve in the Dymaxion map representation. Databases, mapping and cartographies encounter in conceptual art an immediate precedent. Using documents and Art&Language aesthetic based in lists, alphabetical order or archives, the 70s conceptual art is based in the relations of art and memory. Nowadays database visualizations are the site of documentation and materialisation of knowledge, based in software and interfaces. In that sense, maps and diagrams are the resulting site depicting data but recognising the incomplete representation on computational machine. As Roy Ascott appoints, in future the connectivity of whole computers will set up the total intelligence of humanity. Contrary, Media Art Databases are considered by Alan Turing an impossible ideal representation because of random access to information and the searching determinism in browsers. Webstalker by I/O/D is one of the art alternatives to google. From Nam June Paik Random Acces (1960) to Josh On They Rule (2005) databases, nomadic politics and decentralised poetics encounter in post-capitalism a deterritorialized space surviving from system hazard, building the common global village of Lev Manovich. In that Database Visualization displaying of data, information and knowledge, are about more than 600 existing models of Database visualizations of information, basically diagrams based in softwares like thesaurus or processing. Gerhard Dirmoser and Ben Fry are working on them. Many types of software (basically based in artistic opensource tools) are being used as a mapping strategy to display an interactive visualization of the cyberspace flows. Based in Cybergeography, are trying to depict the density flux of communication networks, databases and many other networks. Also named and recognized under categorization of Mapping the net, they are using clusters, processing and pure data. Some common examples are Antidatamining, Antoni Muntadas, Ethan Miller or Warren Sacks. Mapping the city is based in counter-map ideology of Frederic Jameson. One of the main points in which to act is the surveillance displaying. Many actions using locative media are recognised as well as tactical media, although there are some differences between them. Soundscapes are included in that field of research trying to deconstruct the relation within space, time and sound. Artist as Jodi, Stanza, Manu Luksch and medialabs around the world display and research with opensource, mainly, to improve data conditions in public space. These co-existing different strategies to map the city are working with surveillance, traffic, weather and pollution, security and healthy, among others more abstract as feelings, identity or memory. Also, data displayed in streams is dealing and confronting publicity vs information. From situationism to psycogeography, the contemporary art devices display into the city strategies not to perceive the city as a decorative stage for massive corporation, but such a place of memory, refusing the commodification of non-place and the unifying landscape. Since surveillance has turn into merchandise, other tools to socialise public space (implies strategies in communication, location, weather or transport) are being used for artist to build this called DataCities. The George Orwell Big Brother control and securitizing system is now reality. Landscape implies an understanding of Melancholic Aesthetics where the ethos of subject turns into a participatory agent in History who reading the memory of landscape turns it into the Poetics of the Space, field of artists. 

Antidatamining http://rybn.free.fr/ANTI/INDEXFRAME.html 

Ascott, Roy. Telematic Embrace. Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness. University of California Press Berkeley, California 2003

Dreher, Thomas. Art & Language & Hypertext: Blurting, Mapping and Browsing. IASLonline NetArt: theorie http://www.iasl.uni-muenchen.de/links/NAAL.html