Sensorial mapping : Foundational concepts
... Everything you need to know about sensorial cartography : its historical background, the diversity of its practices, the methods and protocols used to produce them.
| Name | Place | English | French |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Key arguments of the workshop | Sharing practice and concepts in experimental mapping | Partager les pratiques et les concepts en cartographie experimentale |
| Part 1 : | A bit of history | The contributions of forerunners | l’apport des précurseurs |
| Part 2 : | Cartography and art | Is mapping art or science ? | Est-ce que cartographier est de l’art ou de la science ? |
| Part 3 : | Semiology and geometry | Science of forms, colors and mouvements | Science des formes, des couleurs et des mouvements |
| Part 4 : | Protocoles | Practising experimental mapping : why and how ? | Pratiquer la cartographie expérimentale : pourquoi et comment ? |
Workshops
These workshops took place over periods of two to three hours (so very short sessions), during which participants were invited to produce sensorial maps following specific instructions provided at the very beginning of each session, and based primarily on data and information gathered from the space around where we were meeting, or by exploring our own memory. The aim was to explore a variety of practices in which participants could experiment with creating their own sensorial and emotional maps, using tools that combine scientific and artistic approaches. These exercises were simple and accessible to everyone. No prior artistic or cartographic skills were required—only the willingness to listen to oneself and others, to explore, to play, and to share.
| Name | Place | English | French |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florence Troin | outside | Sensorial walk with deprivation of one sense | Balade sensible avec la privation d’un sens |
| Aniara Rodado Mariana Rios Sandoval | Outside | From Perception to Map : Shared Sensorial Landscapes fir a collective Cartography of the Senses | De la perception à la carte : paysages sensoriels partagés pour une cartographie collective des sens |
| Kollektiv Orangotango Severin Halder Paul Schweizer | Inside | Giving Voice to the Map : Audio Layers in Analog Cartography | Donner une voix à la carte : produire des couches sonores pour une cartographie analogique |
| Philippe Rekacewicz | Inside | The map that say something of ourselve (TMTSSOOS) or the identity map | La carte qui dit quelque chose de soi-même (LCQDQCDSM) ou la carte d’identité |
Communications
For two and a half days, most participants were invited to present their research, ongoing or completed, in the form of short talks (15 to 20 minutes) to allow time for discussion with the audience. The main idea was primarily to share methodological approaches in cartography and to present the results.
| Author | Place | English | French |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magdaleine Maire | Marseille | “Breathing spaces” in Marseille : spatializing desires against urban capitalism | « Espace de respiration » à Marseille : spatialiser les désirs contre le capitalisme urbain |
| Florence Troin | Mayotte | Three years of sensorial mapping with children in Mayotte | Trois ans de cartographie sensible avec les enfants de Mayotte |
| Cian Dayrit | Manila | Militant mapping in the Philippines : decolonial approach | Cartographie militante aux Philippines : une approche décoloniale |
| Miha Turšič | World | Planetary Public Stack, flattened Worlds, Multiplying Perspectives : Critical Planetary Imaginaries | Infrastructures publique globale, mondes aplatis, multiplication des perspectives : imaginaires planétaires critiques |
| Katharina Wahedi | Namibia | Haiǀǀom engagement with land and the environment : Sensorial mapping at Tsintsabis resettlement farm (Namibia) | La relation des Haiǀǀom à la terre et à l’environnement : une cartographie sensible de la ferme de réinstallation de Tsintsabis (Namibie) |
| Precious Angelica Echague | Marikina (Manila) | Mapping blurred spaces | Vivre et travailler dans un espace pollué |
| Camila Narbaitz Sarsur | Vienna | Citizen knowledge and official data, where contradictions emerge | Savoirs citoyens et données officielles : quand surgissent les contradictions |
| David Bautista Perez | Mexico | From the flow of the Magdalena River : An approach to socio-environmental challenges through participatory mapping | Le long du fleuve Magdalena : une approche des enjeux socio-environnementaux par la cartographie participative |
| Denice Alyssa Salvacion | The Philippines | Beyond Fixed Representations : Practices of Creative Cartography and collaborative mapping practices with communities in the Philippines | Au-delà des représentations fixes : pratiques de cartographie créative et pratiques cartographiques collaboratives avec les communautés aux Philippines |
| Kevin Lai & Josh Snow | Amsterdam | Mapping soil care infrastructures in urban context | Gérer et protéger les sols en milieu urbain : l’apport de laa cartographie sensible |
| Alice Durot, Alexis Grussi-Séné Mariana Rios Sandoval Jakob Hottner | Fos-sur-Mer | Collaborative mapping, memory and anticipation in an industrial town of Fos-sur-Mer | Cartographie collaborative, préservation de la mémoire et anticipation dans la ville industrielle de Fos-sur-Mer |
| Afroditi Avgerou | Paris | Commoning toxic space : uneven exposure, embodiment and collective action in the peripheries of Paris : | Transformer en biens communs les espaces pollués : exposition inégale, incarnation et action collective dans la périphérie de Paris |
| Yamina Sam | Switzerland | Asmekhthey, or the ritual of remembrance : an appropriation of colonial maps by the Kabylian (Algeria) diaspora in Switzerland | Asmekhthey, ou le rituel du souvenir : une appropriation des cartes coloniales par la diaspora kabyle (Algérie) en Suisse |
| Andrea Pla i Rivas | - | Mapping Otherwise : A Manifesto in Crayons and Colour Pencils | Cartographier autrement : un manifeste au crayon noir avec quelques couleurs |
| Emma van Dalen | Aarhus | Between Conviviality and Commodification : "Hygge" through the Lens of Anthropology : | Entre convivialité et marchandisation : le « hygge » au prisme de l’anthropologie |
| Andrea Pla i Rivas | - | Mapping Otherwise : A Manifesto in Crayons and Colour Pencils | Cartographier autrement : un manifeste au crayon noir avec quelques couleurs |
Dialogues on experimental mapping :
overview, compilation, proceedings
Everything you need to know about sensorial cartography : its historical background, the diversity of its practices, the methods and protocols used to produce them, which reflect not only factual elements but also the emotions and feelings that human beings experience in the places where they live and move around.
This are the result/summary of the collective discussions/reflections we have shared around key themes and questions related to the epistemology and definition and experimental, emotional, sensorial mapping practices and its relevance for the humanities/social sciences, and perhaps for understanding the world and space differently, from other perspective (people fighting to preserve their daily life environment, militant acting to protect human right and insur social and spatial justice, etc). Also to share your own experiences as practitioners—whether in the field with informants, for example, or in class with students.
These collective discussion sessions will also provide an opportunity for participants to share specific mapping experiences
Theme 1 : In search of an identity
Experimental mapping : a young discipline in search of its identity : what we generically refer to as ‘experimental cartography’ and which we all practise in a wide variety of forms is also found under a wide variety of names : radical, critical, sensorial, sensory, emotional, participative, creative, collective… We also often meet the expression “counter-cartography”, today challenged by the community of critical cartographers.
Theme 2 : Name it
What, then, would be the most appropriate ways to name the discipline we practise ?
Theme 3 : Relevance and usefullness
Why would we choose the sensorial approach ?
What do we expect this practice to bring us for our research ? How relevant is it for research in the social and human sciences to illustrate and map the data and information we gather from our (or others) experiences of space, landscape, and territory, as well as from our memories throughout our personal history and experience (or others) ?"
Theme 4 : Implementation and methods
How do we implement this “other way” to map the world” ? what are the protocoles, the modus operandi and how to we challenge/test them ?
Theme 5 : is mapping nproducing knowledge ?
By reflecting on our experiences with sensory mapping as one of the methods employed in social science research, we may ask whether this approach can be regarded as a genuine producer of knowledge, comparable to other established tools and techniques in the human sciences.