excited, so both personal and group subjectivities are depicted, and both
map-making, however apparently objective its motivations, is affected
incorporate transient temporal phenomena.
by considerations which give it characteristic forms. To represent is to
A parallel approach is taken in the project ’Ere be Dragons (Boyd Davis
select, interpret, translate, transform: this is the first level of subjectivity.
et al 2007). The user wears a heart-rate monitor connected to a smartphone
Next, selections and distortions which belong to whole cultures and to
or PDA with GPS capabilities. Here the mapping takes place live, as a part of
groups and subgroups are evident – these are the cultural subjective and
the experience of moving about in the world. During a walk, an on-screen
sub-cultural subjective. The latter may take on a conscious socio-political
landscape is built which corresponds spatially to the real one around the
aspect, as in feminist geography, or may simply reflect in some way that
player. At each stage in a journey, the graphical presentation of the route
the world is different depending on who you are and where you start from.
reflects one of five states. Squares of flourishing landscape are displayed
Interactivity introduces the possibility of customisation to the individual
where the walker achieves their optimum heart-rate (previously calculated
and to the time: the individual subjective both spatial and temporal. With
from their age or their resting heart-rate). Either side of the optimum, the
the advent of portable interactive technologies sensitive to multimodal
squares will be desert-like if the rate is too low, or grimly forested if too
inputs, what matters to me now at this moment in my current location and
high. Beyond these zones the whole behaviour of the landscape alters,
circumstances can become central. This introduces a form of subjectivity
darkening and eventually disappearing. A distinction made by Schön (1983)
we could call the egocentric subjective, in which my location and other
highlights an interesting difference between Emotion Map and ’Ere be
aspects of myself impact decisively on the representation. This is perhaps
Dragons: that between reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action:
the furthest that subjectivity has ventured so far, but technological change
in the latter, the ongoing experience is subject to constant feedback,
continues its interplay with altered perceptions of geography to produce
rather as when a designer draws, and both observes and responds to
unanticipated forms of mapping.
the drawn marks in a continuous cyclic experience. Because action and reflection are almost simultaneous, users modify their behaviour in the light of the current state of the map. Such projects are special cases of external cognition (Scaife and Rogers 1996) where, rather than the output representing processes of the mind, it as much represents those of the body. By constructing cognitive artefacts for our own perception we became capable of processing the knowledge they represent in alternative ways which are not easily accessible while they remain internal. The territory as mapped is an externalisation of something which belongs to the user. When this is presented to the user on a device held in the hand while walking, as a kind of prosthetic extension, the element of personal, temporal subjectivity centred on the subject is brought to the fore. These experimental projects take subjective mapping further than it has gone before. This discussion began by emphasising how all 48
about the author Dr. Stephen Boyd Davis is the Reader in Interactive Media at Middlesex University. 49