The Visitors: A Collective Methodology for Encountering and Documenting an Unfamiliar Cityscape

Abstract

From the Dadaist and Situationist walking interventions, to contemporary locative media events and gaming, multimodal mapping methods have been used to extend vernacular methods for knowing and experiencing place, typically cities. In June 2012 a collective of artists, designers and filmmakers converged at ETH Zurich to participate in the Cartography and Narrative Workshop: we named ourselves The Visitors. This was an interdisciplinary initiative of the Art and Cartography Commission of the International Cartographic Association. Within the context of the Workshop activities, this collective were drawn together out of a shared interest in the ‘unknowness’ of unfamiliar cities, and a desire to map place through encounter; mapping through walking in particular. The outcome of this collective ‘derive’ is a film—The Visitors—a time based digital map, that embraces the ambiguities of subjective mapping and place-making.