Introduction:
My work of Mapping is representation of my inner thoughts with external geographic location. This work comes out of a desire to capture the experience and adventure in dreams. I am neither professional nor a graphic artist and had very little experience with photoshop. Very basically as you can see from the chart, the surface and color are starkly simple that it only include the water and land, but it ends by inspiring story of myself by adding dots and connection lines on the surface.
Decision making process:
I have been looking a lot of maps to study lands, rivers, coastlines, where do they happen, how do they interact with each other. The point is to get a feeling of the flow of nature world. There was talk of traveling around the world, talking of never giving up to chase after dreams. Meanwhile, in my dorm, me and my roommates we sat, we tele-conferenced, we cooked meals and shopped online. My mom asked me if I was feeling alright in new places, I said I was feeling excited but a little but stuck. She suggested me instead of staying at school all the time, pretending you are a hard-working student, you need to go places and immerse yourself in culture. So one day on my way from dorm to classroom, I came up with this idea of my self-portrait map of my adventure in the real world. I collected every symbols such as mountains, forest, rivers, islands etc. Drawing and connecting them somehow brought the real scenery back to me. The glistening light of waves, the bumping mountain road. The gift of place is its memories. Map brought my memories together, just like I am collecting gifts. Later that day, I describe to my friend my map－the setup, the design, the challenging and the goal. My friend did challenging me by pointing out the flaw of map that the system is too simple. ” Try to do something challenging, combing two dimension picture to three dimension systems.” She said. I believed in her words and created the second sign-system on top of my map of how people connecting to each other by the internet. For example, we all upload sefie to Instagram no matter where you are, which language you speak, what skin colors you have. I feel that I am communicating with someone thousand miles away while I am making commentary on her/his picture. That feeling is just fantastic.
Reading reference and rational for my self-portrait:
I am influenced by the sentence from ” CHAPTER ONE: Maps Blossom in the Springtime of the State” where it says “The sphericity of the globe is not something that comes to us as seeing-hearing-sniffing-tasting…..It is a residuum of cultural work, of watching ships come up to us from the sea for eons, of thinking about what that might mean, of observing shadows at different locations, of sailing great distance.” Map let people know what other have seen or dreamed up and then how you are affected by their emotions. So I choose to combine two sign-system on the same map: one is my self experience over the world, and another is the internet connections. So it is how me and my experience connected to others’ life by internet. I do not know if internet connect us, or merely bring us together, but the feeling of distance between people are shortened by this form of technology. If someone walk up and telling you how beautiful his hometown is, you might say “Oh, that is really cool, we should go there together sometimes.” But without knowing anything about him or his hometown, i believe you will not go that place eventually. However, on the internet it is like, ” Yeah, this is my life, come and join me, please.” With picture of big smile and fantastic scene, that has became the most inviting post you have ever seen. I suppose you have booked the flight already. That is the power of internet, of a sense of belonging and intimacy.
Artistic Reference:
The map is still a basic route map of island that I got inspiration from Dahlia Essayed work “Start of the Pre-Season”.
And:
“You are here” by Katharine Harmon
” Alternate Realities-from Ft. Collins,2006″ by Janice Caswell
Lars Arrhenius
Works that inspired me from MoMa Exhibits.
