Media Studies

Experimental Geography Reading List

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This is the first installment of a monthly column by Rhizome's Contributing Editor Marisa Olson. "Media Studies" will explore timely issues within the broader field of technology. Each post will pay specific attention to the relationship between these subjects and artistic practice. For this column, Marisa provides a reading list on the topic of "Experimental Geography". In recent years, access to geographical tools and data collection has expanded rapidly, allowing many artists to rethink their relationship to the earth and geographical study. This column provides a summation of publications relevant to these developments.

Please join us tomorrow for a panel, organized by Marisa, on "Experimental Geography". Beginning at 3pm in the New Museum's theater, Creative Time curator Nato Thompson, who curated an exhibition of the same title for Independent Curators International, will lead a discussion with artists Lize Mogel and Damon Rich. - Ceci Moss

The following is an initial list of readings that might be of interest to anyone researching experimental geography. It includes key theoretical texts on the nature of space, texts on locative media, and works on radical cartography. Many of them cross over into game theory, cyberfeminism, relations between real and virtual spaces, surveillance, tactical media, psychogeography, situationism, sound art, networked cultures, site-specific installation art, and other related sub-themes. It's tempting to sort these into temporal or topical categories, but to do so might be to inappropriately compartmentalize an ongoing discourse that moves in new directions every day.

This is only a starting point. Please feel free to add texts in the comments. Links to related syllabi would also be a great resource!

Janet Abrams and Peter Hall (eds), Else/Where: Mapping -- New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, Univ Minnesota Design Institute, 2006

Saul Albert, "Locative Literacy," Mute, July 12, 2004

Marc Augé, Non-Places: an Introduction to the Anthropology of Supermodernity, London & New York: Verso, 1995

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Beacon, 1994

Walter Benjamin, "The Author As Producer," New Left Review Issue 62, July-August 1970

Marsha Berry, "Locative media: geoplaced tactics of resistance," International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Volume 4, Issue 2-3, 2009

Hakim Bey, "No Go Zone"

Hakim Bey, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, Autonomedia, 1985

Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture Routledge, London, 1994

Alexis Bhagat and Lize Mogel (eds.), An Atlas of Radical Cartography, pub. Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008

Joline Blais, "Indigenous Domain: Pilgrims, Permaculture and Perl," Intelligent Agent, Volume 6, Number 2

Julian Bleecker, "A Design Approach for the Geospatial Web," O'Reilly Media, June 2005

Joel Bonnemaison, Culture and Space: Conceiving a New Cultural Geography, I.B. Tauris, 2005

Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, Les Presse Du Reel, 1998

Benjamin Bratton and Natalie Jeremijenko; Laura Forlano and Dharma Dailey, Situated Technologies Pamphlets 3: Situated Advocacy, Summer 2008

Victor Burgin, In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture, University of California Press, 1996

Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Verso, 2006

Guy Debord, "Theory of the Derive," International Situationiste #2, 1958

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, 1984

Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control," OCTOBER 59, MIT Press, Winter 1992

Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, "Tunable Cities," Architectural Design 68, no. 11/12, November-December 1998

John Fels and Denis Wood, The Natures of Maps: Cartographic Constructions of the Natural World, University Of Chicago Press, 2009

Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias, 1967

Michel Foucault, "Panopticism," in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Vintage Books, 1995

Anne Galloway, "Intimations of Everyday Life: Ubiquitous Computing and the City." Cultural Studies, Volume 18, Numbers 2‚ 3, pp. 384-408, 2004 [pdf]

Petra Gemeinboeck and Atau Tanaka, "A framework for spatial interaction in locative media", Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression, June 04-08, 2006, Paris, France

Kevin Hamilton, "Mobility as Freedom in Critical Art and New Media," 2006

Kevin Hamilton, "Absence in Common: An Operator for the Inoperative Community," (ISEA 2006)

Katharine Harmon, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, Princeton Architectural Press, 2003

David Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography, Routledge, 2001

Emma Hedditch, "Locative Feminism," Mute, September 18, 2005

Drew Hemment (ed) Locative Media Special Issue, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Volume 14, Issue 3

Drew Hemment, "The Locative Dystopia" (2004)

Jeremy Hight, "Narrative Archaeology," Xcp: Streetnotes: Summer 2003

Anthony Hoete, ROAM Reader On The Aesthetics of Mobility, Phaidon/ Black Dog Press, 2002

Jeffrey Kastner (ed), Land & Environmental Art (Themes & Movements), Phaidon, 2005

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Wiley-Blackwell, 1992

Lucy Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, New Press, 1998

Lucy Lippard, On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place, New Press, 1999

Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press, 2004

Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City MIT Press, 1960

Tapio Mäkelä, "Ars Memorativa in the Interactive City: Private Layers, Sublime Technologies in Public Spaces, (ISEA 2006)

Lev Manovich, "The Poetics of Augmented Space: Learning from Prada," 2002 [pdf]

William J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, MIT Press, 2003

Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental Knowing, MIT Press, 2004

Trevor Paglen, Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World, Penguin, 2009

Paraskevopoulou, Charitos, Rizopoulos, "Location-specific art practices that challenge the traditional conception of mapping," Art Nodes Issue 8

David Pinder, Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth-Century Urbanism, Routledge, 2006

Simon Pope, "The Shape of Locative Media," Mute February 9, 2005

Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Basic Books, 2002

Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: Geography's Visual Culture, Routledge, 2000

Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, MIT Press, 1998

Alison Sant, "Redefining The Basemap," Intelligent Agent, Volume 6, Number 2

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, Vintage, 1976

Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization and Perception of Time and Space, University of California Press, 1987

Robert Smithson, Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Jack Flam, ed.), University of California Press, 1996

Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust, Penguin, 2001

Erika Suderburg, Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art, University of Minnesota Press, 2000

Pall Thayer "On narrative, abstract and location: A few words on lacation-based data in art," 2004 [pdf]

Nato Thompson (ed), Experimental Geography: Radical Approaches to Landscape, Cartography, and Urbanism

Anthony Townsend, "Envisioning the ubiquitous city"

Anthony Townsend "Digitally Mediated Urban Space: New Lessons for Design" Praxis (2004) [pdf]

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota, 1977

Marc Tuters (ed), "Acoustic Space: Trans Cultural Mapping," Riga: The Center for New Media Culture RICX, 2004

Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis, "Beyond Locative Media," Networked Publics blog

Urban Tapestries essay collection

Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedber, Place: Networked Place, Networked Publics blog

Kazys Varnelis, The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles, Actar, 2009

Robert Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas, MIT Press, 1977

Denis Wood, The Power of Maps, Guilford Press, 1992