Perhaps the most significant thing that came out of the prototype test was how contemporary communications technologies made the cartography of a planar, topographic map seem limited, irrelevant even. In the piece, the map was used as a kind of space, a place where audience and artist meet and communicate; however, the character of the relationship between audience and artist seemed to overwhelm the map. This was intentional, up to a point, where I wanted incongruity on all sorts of levels (the deployment of sophisticated technology for the obtaining of worthless goods, a human as shopping bot, wryly absurd travel diary plotted to the bland efficiency of the Google Map etc etc.) But underneath this superficial irony some more profound and un-foreseen reasons for the redundancy of the map became clear.

A common theme of much comment on the development of modern communication technologies is how the electronic network has come to vie with geographic territory as the locus and object of power, how ‘spaces of flow’ are superseding ‘spaces of places’ (for instance, see William J. Mitchell Me++ p10 quoting Lefebvre, Castells, Hart & Negri). These technologies create space and if space is the object and locus of power, maps are its instrument.

Google Maps is based upon a Teleatlas rendering of Ordnance Survey data. The Ordnance survey collect a huge array of geographic data but the data is generally based upon what is visible on the surface of the U.K. i.e. a topographic representation. Teleatlas further simplifies the representation of geographic space by rendering only land mass outlines, waterways, conurbation extent, roads and railways. Inevitably, the emphasis is on lines of communication – roads and railways – between centres of population. The maps tell you how to get from A to B. But these lines of communication are historic; the maps have no representation for more contemporary lines of communication. Of course, it could be argued that we have had telephone and radio since the early 20th century without topographic maps becoming redundant. Contemporary network technology is different, the sheer volume of data that can be transferred either way and the sort of control possible remotely challenges our notions of presence and distance. We no longer need to get from A to B to work, trade or even meet a partner. So, this leads to the question: is topography an adequate way to represent the significant relationships between people and/or places. My conclusion is that it is not.

Take The One Pound Shop for instance, just knowing where in geographic space Dedominici is seems irrelevant to the customer’s decision to purchase. The connectivity and presence of Dedominici belied his distance from the gallery and we can easily imagine how enhancing the connection with voice or video could bring other criteria into play; is he busy, solvent or broke, engaging, boring, happy or unhappy, on a detox, sympathetic, employed, connected, open to suggestion, available? The complex charactertistics of a face to face encounter would become relevant. The question is how can these be represented and structured by a graphic system.

Once the purchase has taken place and the media documentation uploaded to the map a further problem emerges. By spatially arranging the media data across a map we are using the map as a data structure, a filing system, and it fails. The failure is partly due to aspect – a planar representation holds photographs with perspective – but, again, also one of significance. The spatial arrangement of items (cultural artefacts) on a surface does not convey anything significant about the relationship between them. We can see this problem generally with other projects and services that use maps as a data structure such as the Geoblogging phenomena or Urban Tapestries. Certainly, such arrangements cannot even approach the meaning and significance of novels, landscape painting or movies as accounts of place and life lived there.

So, this is not so much a revocation of maps, as a questioning of the role topography has in the creation of maps. GPS systems will take us to where we want to go, network communication will allow us to be close to distant people, ecommerce will find us the cheapest/best/most desirable item; given these changes, what could maps offer us in the future? A few areas of enquiry might be:

• If we can reach people at all times, separation no longer an issue, what will be the significant information we need to know? Map as indicator of personal state or personal relationships.
• How can we order a record of events, their location and sequence. Map as story.
• Digital technologies offer the promise of dynamic maps. How could maps be drawn as a consequence of interaction, becoming collaborative spaces? Map as social agent.
• If a map is an instrument of power (dividing the surface of the planet up), what would a map of a ‘place of flow’ look like. Map as agent of control.