The map is not the territory. It is the subjective representation of the territory. Geographical information is measured and recorded, interpretted by a cartographer, reduced and edited for reasons of clarity, purpose and politics to symbols on a flat surface. The map is then read by the user who interprets those symbols in the context of her own experience and knowledge of geography, creating a mental map of the territory.

That mental map is also not the territory. Even if that individual has travelled through the symbolised space and seen the terrain for herself, because of the degrees of separation between measurement and publication, and publication and application, the terrain she sees is not the terrain that the geographer saw. Trees have been cut down or have grown up, cliff faces have crumbled, river beds shifted, new roads laid down, trails closed. Nonetheless, the map has given her a better understanding of her physical context and knowing where one is is one of the greatest comforts a person can have.

A fairly recent development in geography has been the application of the study of semiotics to cartography, partly for the purposes of improving the clarity of the information contained in a map and perhaps reducing some of the levels of filtration that stand between the territory, the representation of it, and the end user.

I am making maps in the awareness of the semiotic loads they carry, but with the intention of adding more subjective filtration, rather than reducing it. I am as interested in the individual mental map that the reader creates from the map as I am in the map itself.

The territory that I am exploring, measuring and recording is not geographical. Geography exerts an influence on these maps and their stories. Certainly the symbols I'm playing with derive from geography. However, the territory being mapped is personal experience, emotions, thoughts and memory.

It is not a scientific exercise. There are no certain literal conclusions to be derived from the maps, the symbols in them or their stories and story fragments. Maps in general do not have explicit unified messages. They certainly have implicit ones, but these aren't noted in the legend. The messages only become evident through contextual filtration and are subject to multiple interpretations.

Observe, measure, investigate, wonder, puzzle, infer and guess. This is how maps are drawn.

New maps, more stories and pieces of stories
will be added regularly.

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The pan/tilt Flash script used for the map is a
modification of a script found at www.cleverpig.com.