Topological maps are essential in navigating the plethora of networks that map the modern world: from the London Underground to the Internet, from neural networks to social networks. Rather than the physical geometry of the city, it was the way the city was connected together that was important. The prominent Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy points to the unsolvable 18th-century puzzle “The Seven Bridges of Königsberg,” a groundbreaking “map in mathematics” asking whether it’s possible to cross all seven bridges only once, as a kind of metaphor for how maps reflect multiple dimensions of cultural change: (Image courtesy of Aaron Koblin) ’18th Century Königsberg’ and ’21st Century Kaliningrad’ by mathematician Marcus du Sautoy ‘Flight Patterns’ by artist Aaron Koblin, a visualization based on airplane location data. But while most conventional charts, plans and diagrams claim to offer an accurate, even objective picture of the world, each one is bound by the specific agendas of its creators and users… Cartographies can be altered endlessly to reflect different priorities, hierarchies, experiences, points of view, and destinations. Maps are often an abstraction of the physical or conceptual world - a symbolic depiction of a space or idea that allows one to understand and navigate an unfamiliar topography or complex topology. Obrist touches on this element of psychological wanderlust in the opening chapter: To paraphrase the words that Joyce gives to Dedalus, these “errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” Wandering and drifting can be a geographical and a psychological movement, a migration across borders. This is why Joyce’s Ulysses takes the simultaneous form of a dérive through the environs of Dublin and a drift through the mind of Stephen Dedalus. The dérive is not merely a spatio-temporal drift through urban landscapes, but a drift through the spaces of the imagination in order to arrive at an invention of reality. Obrist points to the particularly appropriate situationist concept of dérive - a term from psychogeography connoting an unplanned, wanderlust-driven journey through an urban landscape - citing his conversation with the Belgian writer and philosopher Raoul Vaneigem: (Image courtesy of John Maeda) ‘Wen Out for Cigrets’ (1985) by artist Ed Ruscha (See more of Kelly’s Internet Mapping Project here.) ‘Map of the Future’ by designer John Maeda In 2009, Wired magazine founding editor and digital culture sage Kevin Kelly asked people to draw a map of the internet as they pictured it, illustrating what he had in mind by drawing his own map. Maps are always a going-beyond the space-time of the present. Obrist remarks on this approach in a companion essay titled “You Are Here”:ĭialogue, conversation and exchange between different fields is the only way we can chart a course through the increasingly complex terrain of contemporary life… Maps produce new realities much as they seek to document current ones. The volume’s greatest gift and highest point of differentiation is, in fact, precisely the sensibility for which Obrist is known and celebrated - the bold cross-pollination of disciplines, which invites the various fields to enrich one another, a beacon whose aggregate beam illuminates the landscape of the unknown. With more than 130 maps by a wide-ranging roster of luminaries spanning art, science, technology, literature, architecture, film, and more - including John Baldessari, Tim Berners-Lee, Louise Bourgeois, Yoko Ono, Kevin Kelly, Damien Hirst, Ed Ruscha, John Maeda, Sean Carroll, Douglas Rushkoff, and Marcus du Sautoy - the book offers a living reminder that rather than objective representations of reality, maps are invariably projections in both the literal and the metaphorical sense, projecting onto the world the mapmaker’s subjective, abstract, psychoemotionally charged ideas about what is real and meaningful.

Just when it might seem like the world doesn’t need another book about maps, Mapping It Out: An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies ( public library | IndieBound) - a magnificent compendium envisioned and culled by legendary curator Hans Ulrich Obrist - proves otherwise. We’ve applied it to everything from understanding time to ordering the cosmos. We’ve found in cartography a tool of propaganda and a springboard for philosophy, a canvas for art and a vehicle for idealism. It is no surprise, then, that maps captivate our imagination so powerfully.

For all the spiritual benefits of getting lost, we humans are habitually driven to orient ourselves to the world and find our place in it.

Yoko ono grapefruit map piece