Program
Download the PDF version of the final program
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List of participants, projects & presentations
Aaron Baxter – Towards Representing Cartographic Uncertainty (PRESENTATION)
Master Student, Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, Montreal
As a student in the course which compiled the database for this conference, I became very interested in the challenges that our class faced in both collecting and representing the data. My understanding of these challenges can be characterized by two types of uncertainty: data relevancy, which includes the methodological challenges in selecting appropriate data for the dataset from that which is available; and data quality, in which we struggled to integrate data from varying spatial resolutions with imperfect accuracy and precision. I grew uncomfortable with this weakness in representation, and further wishing to problematize this, look to explore other ways in which cartographic uncertainty can be graphically included in the map.
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Glenn Brauen – Audiovisual mapping of Montreal air quality data (PRESENTATION)
PhD student – Geomatics & Cartographic Research Centre, Carleton University, Ottawa
I am interested in creating an audiovisual map using web-mapping software that I’ve been working on at Carleton University’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre (GCRC). My initial plan is to couple the BTEX release data with auditory data layers that represent the releases of each of the component contaminants (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene). Air quality measurement and contaminant dispersion through the air are transitory and thus appropriate, I think, to representation using an ephemeral media like sound. Chemical releases near population, in addition to being technically difficult to estimate, are emotional issues and the use of sound in the representation may assist in conveying some of the affective impact of the data, depending on the sound design.
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John Calvelli – Experiments in Correlative Ontography (PRESENTATION)
Faculty, Liberal Studies, Alberta College of Art + Design
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Sébastien Caquard (with Daniel Naud) – Mapping Montreal in films (PRESENTATION)
Part-time faculty, Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Concordia University, Montreal
A movie can serve as a witness of a relation to an experienced or perceived space, and reciprocally contributes to the construction of the meaning to this place: It tells how these places are — or could be — inhabited, territorialized, explored, or rejected. In this project we propose to explore how the city of Montreal is represented through contemporary films, and whether these representations reflect environmental issues as they appear in the database provided for the workshop. To address this issue, we have reviewed in a systematic manner all the recent films that took place in Montreal and mapped out the location of the action (diegesis) as well as the connotation associated to each of them. By comparing these results with the data provided through the environmental injustice database, we hope to better understand how cinematographic representations resonate with social and environmental issues in the city.
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William Cartwright – The City as MetroMap: Envisioning Montreal (PRESENTATION)
Professor in Cartography and Geographical Visualization, School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT, Melbourne – President, International Cartographic Association
MetroMaps provide representations of urban transportation systems that ‘work’ by simplifying the geography of a city and the network of services that travel through, over or under the urban extent. These simplified maps of what are in fact quite complex systems provide (geo)graphic tools to understand a system and to navigate from place to place. Urban transportation systems link place-to-place and the MetroMap is used to illustrate these links. The MetroMap of Montreal will be used as the foundation for provisioning geo-placed artefacts to illustrate the environment of linked places in the city. It will be used as a framework upon which ‘found’ (virtual) objects can be hung. These artefacts will be sourced via the Web (WebCams) and Web 2.0 (for example images from Flickr and videos from YouTube.
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Maryclare Foa – Sound Out: Performance Drawing in Response to Outside Environment (PRESENTATION)
PhD Student, University of the Arts, London, United Kingdom
This paper will be delivered in two parts. In part one I will introduce my practice, performance drawing in which I use sound as a drawing method to interact with the outside environment. I will describe how I have come to understand sound as a method of drawing, which maps, signals, and measures place, and how sonic reflection reveals interactive conditioning between place and practitioner. In part two (as a practical workshop), I will invite the audience to accompany me to a nearby location to participate in a “Montreal Driftsong”. Those present will be directed to sound in response to place, while moving through that place. The psychogeographical process: Participants interacting and responding with place will activate personal engagement and interpretations of place while also allowing for serendipitous happenstance to enter into the work.
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Sven Fuhrmann – Mapping Montreal health data in 3D
Assistant Professor Texas Center for Geographic Information Science, Department of Geography,Texas State University
The work presented and developed at the Arts & Cartography Workshop “Mapping Environmental Issues in the City” will apply the Montreal health data set and explore how threedimensional cartographic representations could serve for public health awareness. A framework and three-dimensional model of Montreal health data, using metaphorical representations will be developed and displayed/visualized during the workshop. The project will explore analog and virtual options of artistic cartographic expressions, providing a platform for discussion of potentials, similarities and differences in analog and digital cartographic expressions. An overall discussion will evolve around usefulness and effectiveness of conventional cartography, contemporary art and geovisualization for public health awareness and environmental management in a city.
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Sarah Kanouse – Inquiry Game Kit
Assistant Professor of Intermedia, University of Iowa, School of Art and Art History
I propose to create an inquiry game kit to connect data-driven cartography to lived experience. The game will take the form of playing cards containing suggested routes and activities for exploring first-hand the hotspots revealed by data on Montreal’s environmental issues. Each card will have a question about the neighborhood’s environment and geography on one side; the other side will suggest several possible ways of answering the question through embodied exploration and social interaction. The kit will be rounded out with maps of the hotspots; a booklet providing background information, directions, and blank pages for sketches, impressions, and reflections; and a system for collecting samples and artifacts. I currently envision the kit produced from the art and cartography workshop to be a prototype for a digitally printed, limited edition game.
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Annalise Rees – Finding Place
Visual Artist, Port Adelaide, Australia
As a visual artist I would like to map the city of Montreal by way of direct experience, walking, looking and interacting physically with the city. I propose a series of site-specific drawings in immediate response to the environment and environmental issues presented by the database. These drawings will be the result of an encounter in and within the environment via the artist’s presence. Stretching from drawings physically inscribed into the landscape, to drawings made on paper in location, these maps will trace the artist’s interaction with the city and therefore the spatial representations of this specific database from direct lived experience. This hand drawn approach acts as a way of communicating spatial information gleaned from a process of direct engagement, as act and as artifact. In this sense mapping is considered not only as a means of representing spatial information, but also as a cognitive act reflective of human involvement and interaction with place.
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Virginia Antonijevic[1] and Lynn Rosentrater[2] – Problematizing Climate Change Through Integral GIS (PRESENTATION)
[1] Research associate, University of Bergen, Institutt for geografi
[2] PhD student, University of Oslo, Department of Sociology and Human Geography
Climate change is recognized as one of the most challenging and complex problems facing society today. Given the tendency of individuals to reinforce their existing cognitions, we are interested in techniques that problematize climate change from the objective, subjective, collective and individual contexts in which it is occurring. At the workshop in Montréal this September, we intend to demonstrate an approach for problematizing climate change through geographic information systems (GIS) and integral theory. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, and drawing on recent advances in geographic information science which have enabled public participation, discussion, and negotiation in spatial decision‐making, we will develop an example of how Integral GIS can be used to communicate about climate change in a way that is iterative and reflexive, as well as contextual and conceptual.
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Laurene Vaughan – Mapping Environmental Issues in Montreal: Seeking the living database of the city
Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication and Research Leader within the Design Research Institute at RMIT University, Melbourne
Typically we understand data as being facts or statistics about something; these are the measurable, collectable, countable and storable information about the world. They have an element of truth and certainty about them. These facts pertain to both the natural, constructed and inhabited world. The database is the place where these facts are housed; the facts sit there, waiting for our intervention in order to come to life for some use or another. In this project I intend to explore through the collection and mapping of site-specific images and mementos of the data as they exist in the inhabited city of Montreal, and in so doing, seek the living database of the city. It will be a kind of ‘mash-up’ of vernacular mapping and subjective place recording methods with the official objective data of the database.
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Tom Weatherburn – Geodemographic segmentation analysis (PRESENTATION)
GIS expert
Geodemographics is the analysis of people based on where they live. It is based on the premise that the location a person or groups of people reside will be a source of information as to how they live. Geodemographic segmentation is a statistical technique whereby a multitude of demographic variables are analyzed and grouped into ‘clusters’ describing the socio-economic character of pre-defined spatial units. The analysis of variables in addition to race and wealth can illuminate politically and economically grounded explanations for the existence of environmental injustice. The results of geodemographic segmentation are often shown in a digital map with prominent socio-economic features of spatial areas displayed as an attached table or database. However, given the interdisciplinary nature of the project/workshop, this analysis can provide ample avenues for visualization and interpretation.
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Kathy Waghorn – Mapping community gardens in Montreal
Senior Tutor, National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, University of Auckland, New Zealand
This given dataset presents a paradox. While it is the air (quality) and soil (toxicity) that is mapped we see evidence of neither in the maps themselves. While the “eye of god” position would seem to position a viewer in the air looking down at the earth/soil what is depicted is a region shaded a particular colour. This coloured region encodes data of air and soil. I would like to seek out and locate things that straddle this surface. Treating the surface of the ground as a datum, soil below, air above I would like to locate activities that inhabit both realms. Which leads me to gardening. Plants, with their roots in the ground and leaves in the air, do this. Moreover, plants register and effect soil and air conditions. Working with the idea of gardens I propose to map the existing community gardens in Montreal.
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