Geospatial Art-Creation in Multi-Sensory and Digital Worlds
Geospatial Art-Creation in Multi-Sensory and Digital Worlds
Making sense beyond the visual
Creative geovisualization has opened up all kinds of possibilities for digital humanities research exploring the intersections of history, geography, and art. It is important to recognize, however, that places and spaces of the past, present, and future are sensed in all ways that go beyond the visual. Not discounting the evocative, descriptive, and connective potential of creative geovisualization, it is worth considering what might be “overlooked” in storytelling projects that focus so explicitly on the visual. What is the tactility or sonicity of a digital map? How does a placefeel differently when viewing it on a screen through a GIS interface? Such questions do not imply that digital representations of place are not textured, emotive, or multi-sensory; indeed, Gillian Rose’s work on interface, network, and friction suggest otherwise (2016). However, a more dedicated focus on the more-than-digital and more-than-visual might actually enhance creative geovisualization projects in the future.
For the remainder of the module, we consider the storymapping opportunities that are created through a greater attentiveness to the more-than-visual world and consider some of the methods used to communicate such relationships. These include tactile, hand arts practices of beadwork (“re-mapping” Lake Nipissing), and the affective dimensions of sound (e.g. making climate and hydrological data “sing” through digital data sonification). The examples below are also connected through the use of geospatial art-creation to explore the ongoing histories of environmental and climate change. All of them showcase the fluid, multi-sensory spatialities of the digital, material, human, and non-human, inspiring further questions like: what is art, what is data, what is the past, and what is space?
The Lake Nipissing Beading Project (2020-)
Authors’ Note: The authors of this module are settler-geographers who were involved as part of the Lake Nipissing Beading Project organizing team. We use first-person language at times to situate ourselves in the narrative when appropriate, but we acknowledge that we are only part of a much larger collaboration that includes First Nation members, settlers, academics, and non-academics who all shape and interpret the project in different ways beyond what we are able to discuss briefly here. Please visit the website (listed at the top of the module) for a list of fellow team members, without whom this project and module would not be possible.
Content Warning: In the “Beading Active Histories” section, we mention the painful discovery of mass graves of children at sites of former residential schools across Canada as a factor shaping the project. Please take care while reading and feel welcome to skip ahead if needed.
Lake Nipissing (Nbisiing) is situated in the heart of Anishinaabeg territory and is part of the lands protected by the Robinson Huron T