See this entire article (2mb PDF) here.
In the Visual Fields section of CP 56 Denis Wood considers artists Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault and their work projecting and mapping the human body. This work, “at once so close to that of mapmakers and at the same time so completely alien, forces us to confront afresh the bizarre, distorted, multiperspectival fact of the map, and so refresh our own self-image.”
“In 1996 LoCurto and Outcault attended a show about Buckminster Fuller’s work where his icosahedral projection of the world hit them as something of an epiphany, revealing for them the sculptural implications of a map. ‘It was probably,’ LoCurto and Outcault have written:
… the simplicity of his projection that made us understand what mechanics were involved but, like most people, we’d never really thought too much about how a map originated from a three dimensional surface. We saw connections between this and the artistic problem of rendering a three dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface as well as with the Cubist and Futurist idea of simultaneity, experiencing that three-dimensionality at once in its entirety. We’d been working with the figure, particularly our own, prior to this and the idea of projecting the human figure like a map using digital technologies struck us as a way to add to these traditions in a contemporary way. We also imagined the process itself would contribute aesthetically to the final images by tearing the body as it flattened it, emphasizing the frailty and vulnerability we saw as inherent in our condition.”
Citation: Denis Wood. “Some Things Lilla LoCurto and William Outcault Have to Say About Maps.” Cartographic Perspectives 56, Winter 2007, pp. 81-88 (color).
See this entire article (2mb PDF) here.
More on LoCurto and Outcault here.
Cartographic Perspectives issue #56 (Winter 2007) will be mailed soon to NACIS members. is $42/year ($20 for students) and includes three issues of the journal.
