Dubious Views:
questioning institutional representations in tourism and cartography
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Subversive Cartography

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Scroll through this essay using the navigation to the bottom-left. Within the essay there are numerous links to supplementary information, and outside websites, these links are highlighted in blue.

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This image is of an algorithmic map showing a psychogeographic walking route. This map is made up of a series of yellow lines, some intersecting, with arrows pointing to landmarks represented by letters.

Wilfried Hou Je Bek
Psychogeogram (a Jigsaw Walk), 2003

This is a screen shot of a photobloger website. It is a worms-eye view of a building and sculpture, with a bird flying in the sky above. It is outside Union Station in Toronto, a popular tourist site, but from a view that could only be taken while walking on foot and from a low viewpoint.

Sam Javanrouh
Screen Shot from photoblog: Daily Dose of Imagery, 2005

This is a screen shot of a photobloger website. It is a worms-eye view of a building and sculpture, with a bird flying in the sky above. It is outside Union Station in Toronto, a popular tourist site, but from a view that could only be taken while walking on foot and from a low viewpoint. The image represented here is a space you would not find on any government map or tourist brochure. 'Somewhere Around Yonge and Wellesley, Downtown Toronto' represents an urban space in a back ally. There is a green couch underneath a fire escape beside a brick wall.
'Murmur' was an audio documentary project that allowed pedestrians to listen to stories in the spots that they originally took place using their mobile phones. This image captures the sign 'Murmur' beside a man with his cell phone, presumably listening to one of the stories.

[murmur]

Select one of the following [murmur] pieces.

Urban Tapestries, presented in London, England, is a software platform that provided public authoring and knowledge sharing through mobile technology and geographic information systems as an alternative to the institutional map. The project allowed users to annotate the official maps and the public spaces around them as they explored it. The image represented here is a screen shot of a PDA with an urban map overlayed with abstract vectors on the screen.

Urban Tapestries
Screen Shot 1, 2003-2004

Urban Tapestries, presented in London, England, is a software platform that provided public authoring and knowledge sharing through mobile technology and geographic information systems as an alternative to the institutional map. The project allowed users to annotate the official maps and the public spaces around them as they explored it. The image represented here is a screen shot of a PDA with an urban map overlayed with abstract vectors on the screen. The image here is of a screen shot of the Urban Tapestries website, including a list of authors and a map viewer on the right. This image is of an urban map overlayed with points connected by lines from the Urban Tapestries website.
Rixome is a project that intends to allow people to annotate public spaces. It will work on various portable devices such as laptops, PDA's or mobile phones. It will allow the users to see items posted by others. In this screen shot from the website, buildings and the sky is overlayed with comments in Spanish in realspace.

Rixome
Screen Shot 1, 2002-2006

Rixome is a project that intends to allow people to annotate public spaces. It will work on various portable devices such as laptops, PDA's or mobile phones. It will allow the users to see items posted by others. In this screen shot from the website, buildings and the sky is overlayed with comments in Spanish in realspace. In this second Screen Shot from Rixome, silhouettes of buildings with blue skies and clouds are overlayed with comments in Spanish in realspace.
PdPal allowed people to download a basic 'official' map of the Times Square area onto their PDA devices. Then, using the 'tool-kit' that comes with that map, viewers could plot their path through the area, making note of the details that catch their eye. Many were broadcast on the Panasonic Astrovision board in Times Square. PDPal welcomed the details of everyday life that did not fit onto official maps and images, letting the individual be the author of the unofficial map. The image represented here is of a PDA with a map overlayed with icons on the screen.

PDPal
Screen Shot 1, 2003

PdPal allowed people to download a basic 'official' map of the Times Square area onto their PDA devices. Then, using the 'tool-kit' that comes with that map, viewers could plot their path through the area, making note of the details that catch their eye. Many were broadcast on the Panasonic Astrovision board in Times Square. PDPal welcomed the details of everyday life that did not fit onto official maps and images, letting the individual be the author of the unofficial map. The image represented here is of a PDA with a map overlayed with icons on the screen. This image is of the PDPal information panel located in a bar/restaurant. PDPal Web interface screen shot with the cute PDPal orange animated figure.
This screen shot is of a bus stop at 104th Ave in Surrey from 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey.' It is of a bench with a Re/Max ad. By using institutional maps as a basis for the project, the artists reveal the areas that would not be put on the map, focusing on the long, lonely gaps between development and growth.

Every Bus Stop in Surrey
Screen Shot 1, 2004

This screen shot is of a bus stop at 104th Ave in Surrey from 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey.' It is of a bench with a Re/Max ad. By using institutional maps as a basis for the project, the artists reveal the areas that would not be put on the map, focusing on the long, lonely gaps between development and growth. This is a screen shot from the 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey' website. The bus stop represented here is located outside a UHAUL business on Barnston Hwy. This screen shot is of a bus stop at 104th Ave in Surrey from 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey.' It is of a bench with a Re/Max ad. By using institutional maps as a basis for the project, the artists reveal the areas that would not be put on the map, focusing on the long, lonely gaps between development and growth.
This photograph is of a billboard in a field advertising real estate in Townsend, stating 'Townsend: Designed With You In Mind.' This failed utopian urban community is represented in this project using maps and government archives as portals into the non-rational terrain of the places they represent.

Townsend Retraced
Screen Shot 1, 2005

This photograph is of a billboard in a field advertising real estate in Townsend, stating 'Townsend: Designed With You In Mind.' This failed utopian urban community is represented in this project using maps and government archives as portals into the non-rational terrain of the places they represent. Townsend, a community on the shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, represents a failed 1970s planned community. It's boundaries are represented here on a map, part of a screen shot from the website with links and photos. Townsend is a small farming community today, but was built on speculation of supposed future inhabitants. Here, we see a screen shot from the website that depicts a goose race at a local fair.
'One Block Radius,' was an extensive survey of a one block area of New York's social geography, transferred from the physical to the virtual. The readymade maps served both as conceptual counterpoints to the institutional originals. This screen shot from the website shows the table of contents, a map of the area and a photograph of 'Cross with dumpster'. It captures the seedy, disorderly or marginalized omitted from institutional maps and archives.

One Block Radius
Screen Shot 1, 2004

'One Block Radius,' was an extensive survey of a one block area of New York's social geography, transferred from the physical to the virtual. The readymade maps served both as conceptual counterpoints to the institutional originals. This screen shot from the website shows the table of contents, a map of the area and a photograph of 'Cross with dumpster'. It captures the seedy, disorderly or marginalized omitted from institutional maps and archives. This screen shot from 'One Block Radius' shows 'Budweiser bottle and orange peel.' This close-up shot of a beer bottle in a paper bag on a sidewalk, explores the numerous layers of an urban microcosm framed within a single city block in Manhattan's lower East Side. This final screen shot from 'One Block Radius' shows 'a white cross hanging on a nasty green, tagged-up wooden wall.'
This stitched together photograph of every building on the 'Sunset Strip' is a panoramic view of a specific geographic area, to which Borda's 'Every Bus Stop in Surrey' is conceptually linked. Along the top of the image are photos of buildings, cars and intersections. The image continues along the bottom of the image upside down.

Ed Ruscha
Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966

This image shows a Taxi in a tunnel with a Teletaxi screen playing a video.

Teletaxi
2005

This image shows a Taxi in a tunnel with a Teletaxi screen playing a video. This image shows a view of the back of a taxi with the Teletaxi screen playing a video. As the taxi moved through the city, a GPS receiver attached to the computer triggered location-specific media artworks to appear on the screen. Teletaxi, a mobile, site responsive project presented in Montreal and Toronto, allowed taxi passengers to experience geo-specific artworks on a touch screen. The image here shows the touch screen computer with an image of an urban map. Camillie Turner's video The Colour Line
EXAMPLE
OF VIDEO
In this historical photograph of a Paris street, Borda links her practice to the work of this 19th century photographer. However, unlike Borda, Marville was commissioned to capture the city for historical record. This photo is an old sepia-toned image of a cobbled street and a stone fence in a horse market.

Charles Marville
Horse Market, 1871

Borda also links her practice to the work of Atget, another Parisian commissioned to document Paris. Like Atget, Borda sees herself as documenting her geographical surroundings before it changes through time and progress. The historical image represented here is of a street corner in Paris with the Old School Of Medicine on one corner, and a Liquor store on the other.

Eugene Atget
The Old School of Medicine, Rue De La Bucherie, 1898

In this alternative map of the world, Buckminster Fuller offers an alternative to the very concept of the institutional map. A map of the globe is projected onto the surface of a polyhedron. It has no up or down, it is not a traditional view of the globe.

Buckminster Fuller
Dymaxion Map

In this alternative map of the world, Buckminster Fuller offers an alternative to the very concept of the institutional map. A map of the globe is projected onto the surface of a polyhedron. It has no up or down, it is not a traditional view of the globe. This black and white map has all the markings of traditional cartography. It shows latitude and longitude and all the continents. However, this map of the globe has been adjusted for land mass rather than for shape. This map of the globe outlines the world system's urban hierarchy and the peripheral zones / hinterlands. It is a black and white map with Africa at the bottom and Australia at the top, representative of a world system in its spatial relations between the centers of capital accumulation.