Maps as a narrative landscape

#Maps #Artwork

I love maps.

I love how they look — the styles, the details. I also love how they convey information about a place — not only where it is, but often what it's like. That sense of the evocative is very compelling to me.

And I also love how maps can overlay almost anything — not only geographic landscapes, but also emotional landscapes, narrative landscapes, etc. etc... It's bloody fantastic.

A couple of years ago I got a packet of those perforated postcard-sized printer sheets, initially for printing postcards.

But I realized that it's a really interesting format for narrative — four sections, dislocated from each other, to be sent over the mail, and maybe (*maybe*) reassembled at the far end. What happens during that trip? What if one quadrant gets lost? Or torn? Or sent to Tunisia for a bit? [^1]

So I set out to make a story through cartography, and send it through the mail. Unfortunately I forgot to grab a photo after putting in all the street names.

[^1]: Because the cool thing about real mail is not that it gets there, but the journey it takes. Including getting lost.