Thesis Book: Michael Bonfiglio

MICH AEL M AKES An Exploration

of an Exploration

of Moving Maps

known formally as Dynamic Cartography

MICH The world of maps was a bit foreign to me. I had committed myself to a field of which I had little technical knowledge. Disoriented but not dissuaded, I waded into the cartographic waters. To transform into a map expert, I began at the beginning: with history. I consulted the oracle that is Google. I had so many questions, and I thought Google would have all the answers.

But maps are as old as fuck, and quickly it became apparent that if I wanted to get to the heart of the cart’, I would have to venture to a place that time has forgotten: the library.

HAEL MAKES A STUDY

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A MAP EXPERT’S READING LIST History of Cartography Edited By J. B. Harley & David Woodward Mapping the World: An Illustrated History Of Cartography Ralph E. Ehrenberg Mapping : A Critical Introduction To Cartography and GIS Jeremy W. Crampton Rethinking The Power of Maps Denis Wood with John Fels & John Krygier Cartographic Relief Presentation Eduard Imhof Elements of Cartography Arthur Robinson The Look of Maps Arthur Robinson

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Over the bridge and into the books I went.

I checked out every book on mapping and cartography I could find, which in an art-school library turned out to be not that many. I dragged my bounty home and began what I thought would be a ten-second movie montage of me, awash in dusty rays of library sunlight, flying through a flutter of pages, landing softly in instant erudition. Reading and researching are, apparently, incredibly time-consuming, not at all like the movies #sadface. But I had bought this super chic lamp to sit under while I absorbed, which made things bearable.

MOVIE MONTAGE TIME

BOTCHING IT IN BABYLON This Babylonian world map is taken as a serious example of ancient geography, since the places are shown approximating correct positions. However, the map was mainly used to pass down their view of the mythological world.

GUESSING GIRTH IN GREECE Eratosthenes, a Greek mathematician, geographer, and poet, estimated the equator with remarkable accuracy, ca. 3rd century BC.

TOTALLY PTOLEMY Ptolemy organizes all the Roman knowledge of the world into an atlas, which later gets lost.

THE HISTORY OF MAPS (SLIGHTLY ABRIDGED, BUT TOTALLY ACCURATE)

THE VERY ORDERED CHINESE By the third century BC, Pie Xie, a Chinese cartographer had already identified six map making principles: proportional measure, standard or regulated view road measurement, leveling of heights, determination of diagonal distance, and straightening of curves, that closely resemble what we use today.

SHADY SWISS In 1668, Hans Conrad Gyger created one of the first examples of shaded relief for the government of Zurich.

His map of the Zurich area took 38 years make.

MAPPAMUNDI IN THE MIDDLE AGES Used to instruct the faithful about the significant events in Christian history not to record their precise locations.

They were often schematic in character and geometric usually circular or oval in shape. It was customary to place east at the top of the map as nod to Bethlehem.

PTOLEMY STRIKES BACK

ROBINSON CRUSADER Arthur Robinson, cartographer and geographer, writes the seminal text on cartographer for the 20th century and works assiduously to rid cartography of “artistic� maps and make design more science based.

In 1397 the Codex Urbinas Graecus 82 makes its way from Constantinople to Florence, resulting in an explosion of mapping activity during the Renaissance.

AND THEN THERE WAS GOOGLE MAPS

Navigating forums is like shopping at Century 21: it’s hit or miss (mostly miss) and a little bit dangerous. Sometimes you think you’ve found a solution only to find out you have to download something—a dicey proposition at best. I was often confronted with my own personal Sophie’s Choice: potentially solve all my problems or potentially kill my computer. But onward and upward I went, bobbing and weaving through the internet terrain to arrive at proficiency with the software. I began by making what one could only describe as abstract pixel paintings, but I ended by making actual maps. It was time to tie things together.

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SHORELINE RETREAT: FORM Because GeoTIFFs store elevation data as a grey value — the darker the pixel the lower the elevation — I was able to exploit this with the Cinema 4D software and have pixels extrude based on color value to create a topographic plane. What I enjoy most about this rendering is that the pillars that make up the landscape are literally threedimensionalized pixels.

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When you complete the most difficult thing that anyone has ever done in the history of the world, it really gives you some perspective.

As I look back at my MICAn experience, I see that I have: banked many more Gladwellian hours (toward the 10,000 needed to become an expert) in design; accumulated new outward-facing skills, like wireframing and web languages; and learned as much new software as new theory. But stuff happened to my insides, too: like crippling self-doubt, bouts of psychotic frustration, and besiegement by the where-to-begin bear.

There was a humorous irony in feeling lost while making maps, one that ultimately ushered me to the understanding that my study of maps was not just a lesson in geographic wayfinding, but self wayfinding too. Getting lost is perhaps a step in finding where you are and Dynamic Cartography served as a guide in the physics of locating yourself, while moving, in a world that too is moving. This project has always been about animation and I mean that in every sense of the word, including: to give life to. I hope and believe that what I have made will live on; that this is a viable and good direction for cartography and design, because the world, the people that occupy it, and the maps that describe it are best when they are in motion.

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