Abstract
Every artifact contains a multitude of spatial references. Through them every artifact becomes a map on its own. This map is multilayered and complex, combining virtual with real geographies. It needs to be deciphered according to these qualities and seen in reference to its various ontological contexts. In this sense the artifact—as a map—is a representation of an imaginative geography of the culture it was produced in, encompassing the concept of neighboring cultures. The most important ingredient for comprehending the nature of the artifact is that it at the same time defines and is defined by space. The paper aims at presenting the idea of space in a different cultural and historical context and to contrast it with a modern view on the geographies of those same objects. Those include mobile artifacts and maps. As an overall agenda, the paper is dedicated to the use of the contemporary geo-information and cartography, as well as the humanities to draw from an understanding of space represented by the objects. It examines, from the point of view of the humanities, the forms of application of a historical geography, combined with an imaginative geography when addressing the issue of representing and communicating the history, importance and context of artifacts. The aim is to facilitate a profounder investigation of art in its spatial existence, while adhering to its original and transformed contexts throughout time.
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Notes
- 1.
Another increasingly popular way of displaying content is through a timeline. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2011b) practices this way of visualizing for over 10 years by now, and the British Museum (BBC 2012) experimented together with the BBC on this concept. On a broader level, timelines have been added to the Europeana (Koninklijke Bibliotheek 2012) and the Artstor (2012) portals within their latest updates of 2011. Both methods though arise from the traditional way history and art history have been transmitted in schools and through survey books. Cf. Nelson (1997, pp. 37–39).
- 2.
See e.g. the Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur (Bildarchiv Foto Marburg 2012) or the Zwangsarbeit im NS-Staat Project (Deutsches Bundesarchiv 2010). The Google Art Project (Google Inc. 2011), to which belong almost 20 museums, might also be mentioned in this context. Nevertheless the use of a map-based presentation is more thoroughly advanced in the field of popular culture through e.g. the integration of Panoramio (Google Inc. 2012) into Google Maps.
- 3.
Such as the Edward Muybridge Collection (Kingston Museum and Heritage Service 2011) or the above mentioned Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011b). The recently launched and freely accessible tool created by the Library of Congress named Viewshare (2011) makes it even possible for every small collection to explore these functionalities for their holdings.
- 4.
On this aspect see the contribution by S. Teetor in this same volume.
- 5.
While in these cases the attribution to Constantinople seems consistent, other examples are less obvious and thus belong to a common tendency to oversimplify the distribution of artistic centers. Due to lack of knowledge about the origins of a vast number of artworks from the Byzantine period and a certain lack of imagination concerning production places of high qualitative art, a disparity between the center, meaning mostly the capital Constantinople and leading monasteries as the Saint Catherine’s monastery on Sinai, and the peripheries is still being perpetuated and can be observed in the majority of museum and exhibition catalogues (cf. Evans 2004; Cormack 2008; Frings 2010).
- 6.
This applies e.g. to the related information on the artifact in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (The Metropolitan Museum of Art 2007).
- 7.
- 8.
The digital version is based on the hardcopy edition by Kugler et al. (2006).
- 9.
Cf. Kline (2001, pp. 184–187), where the biblical reinterpretation of this episode of the Alexander romance is discussed.
- 10.
The designation “our” and “their” are put in quotation marks, as it is not necessarily given who “we” and “they” are. These collective terms would need further definition, a task that can not be further explored in the context of this paper.
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Gargova, F. (2013). Understanding Artifacts Through Geographies: Perceiving Geographies Through Artifacts. In: Kriz, K., Cartwright, W., Kinberger, M. (eds) Understanding Different Geographies. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29770-0_6
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