Monday, March 15

We will discuss our next assignment, which will deal with something (sometimes) called locative media. We'll kick off our discussion with a reading on cities and maps by geographer Denis Cosgrove titled "Carto City" [download/view the PDF here].

Some initial points to consider in your reading:

1) Cosgrove asserts that cartography both records and creates the city. While he gives some specific examples of this, how have you experienced this dual nature of maps?

2) The author also discusses some of the changing roles maps have played - from celebratory images of cities to the utilitarian plotting of space. He also (p. 155) discusses the difference between maps that reveal a coherent understanding of space (land use maps) and those that read space as a coded structure (the London A-Z Guide, or a zipcode map). Do the maps you use most tend toward one or the other?

AND BRING A CAMERA (phone cameras are OK, if you can get the pictures for posting them)

Plym Auditorium (134 Temple Buell Hall)

"Jacques Tati’s gloriously choreographed, nearly wordless comedies about confusion in the age of technology reached their creative apex with Playtime. For this monumental achievement, a nearly three-year-long, bank-breaking production, Tati thrust his signature character, the endearingly clumsy, resolutely old-fashioned Monsieur Hulot, into a bafflingly modernist Paris. With every inch of its superwide frame crammed with hilarity and inventiveness, Playtime is a lasting testament to the modern age."

If you haven't seen this film - it's worth taking the time to see it on a big screen on Friday. Tati especially pointed at (laughingly) the increasing ubiquity of glass in modern architecture as it became the norm with skyscrapers and corporate buildings.