[ENGL 527] Entering a risky territory: space in the age of digital navigation – Valerie November, Eduarado Camacho-Hubner, and Bruno Latour

This might be too playful (resultant from fever or frenzied excitement from attending the Networked Humanities conference this weekend), but what if we moved from thinking about maps in terms of space (“tyranny of space” as a historical invention on the premise of precise geometry to give shape to states that are anything but perfect geometry)  to scapes? What I’m referring to here is the iPad app made by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers that creates soundscapes based on the proximity, size, and shape of elements on the scape, that seem to be able to respond to something like the navigational trajectories as described by Latour, November, and Camancho-Hubner in the article. To me this is something a little bit like echolocation or a mindfulness to the aural structure of a changing scape that might be more immediate than a visual one in digital navigation. It might be easy to say that we tend to rely more on visuals than sound sin navigating, but sound in navigation already exists in many intricate and dynamic scapes- air traffic controllers, or high precision military guidance – and to an extent on the GPSs of the common through voice command/direction (which is relatively static or at least stagnant in relation to the dynamism of our trajectories). With digital technologies of navigation, will us laypersons get to experience maps that move beyond visuals or aural relays that are based on the visuals that are mapped mimetically? (this might be more of a have we ever considered this question, or a how would this be or not be useful).

[thanks to Nick for sharing Scape]