learning the ropes

We’re reading a selection called “Multimedia and Performance” for Performing Technology. It’s a chronology of the development of performance art from the mid 1960s through the late 1990s. Although our theme for the week is “Theater and Narrative,” I’m having a hard time discerning the concept of narrative in the pieces; however, the story of the chronology of the pieces seems like an interesting narrative and so I’ve tried to illustrate it as a map. I’m not sure if this is useful, but the dense text made it difficult to sort out who was working with who and who they influenced.

I tried to use Bubbl.us to do this, but it made a big mess. What I really want is a tool that let’s me describe relationships as text…

Person
created/exhibited/performed: [blah] – when – where
influenced: [person]
collaborated with: [person] – when
part of: [group]

This sounds a lot like a social networking site. I want to be able to display a timeline of these events, or a cloud of related information.

As I was trying to wade through James Corner’s “The Agency of Mapping”, I decided to try a little mapping experiment of my own.

View Larger Map

This experiment doesn’t quite reflect the depth that Mr. Corner brings to his essay, but it does reveal some interesting biases in the author’s research. I’ve plotted the birthplaces of “mappers” that Corner mentions in his essay along with links I could find to their work — much of it in Google Books. It is interesting to note that all of the mappers he mentions were born in the western hemisphere and are male.