Space is the Place - It's the journey not the destination?

More than one ongoing exhibition is making use of geographical abstraction - AKA "Maps", topography, etc. Three shows and one active Internet blog play with the structures and relationships of topography. Two fall into the art object category while the remainder use the tools of new media to express their ideas.

In Bernal Heights at 341 Bocana,  Val Britton  has created collaged drawings resembling topographic maps that "flop" off the wall - if you've ever been in a city elevator on moving day with the blankets protecting the walls imagine one that isn't hanging on all it's grommets - only more gestural.  The map's manilla, white, sepia and sienna tones are adapted from area maps including routes the artist's father took as a truck driver. The collages are constructed improvisationally according to the artist statement and are more visually present as water colors than collage.  While the point made in the work is not glaringly clear until you read the statement the bold aesthetic is irresistible.  In the statement she refers to geology and excavation of memory, traversing what lays beneath as well as navigating the surface.  The emergence of these pieces into 3 dimensions alludes to a tectonic energy breaking free of terrestrial armature.  The inviting size of these lyrical wall map-mural-sculptures in the intimate space on the corner of Cortland and Bocana streets are definitely worth exploring.

You may have noticed Adriane Colburn's cut-paper map construction representing the San Francisco sewer system on one of the walls at the YBCA a couple years back, if not then a walk through the current show at Toomey-Tourell gallery may give you an idea of what it looked like. Unlike Colburn's mega large depiction of the unseen urban viaducts though Oregon-based Anglo artist Matthew Picton has created a three dimensional cut-out rendition of Barcelona, Spain. The structure of waterways, roadways and other transportation lines are laid out on a framed backing and composed of a polyester sheeting mispelled on artbusiness.com and the gallery websites as "durular". Actually the material being used is called Dura-lar which is pinned up onto a framed backing. The negative space in the lattice created by intersecting streets is razor cut and then overlayed with other elements of urban geography to create  beautiful depictions of some very beautiful cities. The result here is much more tighter than Colburne's sewer map but just as impressive if not more.

Southern Exposure hosted yet another Anglo-artist's cartographic vision - Christopher Nold held an informal talk on biomapping in the front room. Using technology is nothing amazing these days but the danger of using New Media to make your point is in the geek factor.  Nold closely avoids this by making this a participatory work - but barely.
He's assembled a hand-held device using the principles of "Lie Detector" technology to gather data. The rule of the game is to send someone out into the world with it attached to their hand and have them walk around the city.  Upon the participant's return the "galvanic skin response" readings are downloaded while the experiences of that person's trip are related anecdotally.  From this Nold creates an "emotional map" of the route travelled. 
Apart from the readymade aspect of the technology and conceptual focus of the work the resulting visual presentation was pretty flat.  There was this "pretty" colorful spectral map on one wall - kind of what you would imagine what the Psyshop trance record label would print as a record cover - Michelin map meets eX, but that was it...  During the talk Nold sat at a computer showing a couple "googly" looking satellite photos with uninspired color graph markings.  As an introduction he used a slideshow including the "Surrealist Map of the World" from 1929 as well as a Los Angeles map charting the concentration of homeless people. Most of it was about how interesting maps can be with one exception.  Nold railed at the sterility of athe LA homeless map with what he characterized as dehumanizing.  This contradicted the images from the presentation as well as the map on the wall though.  Maps themselves are abstractions on there own and critiquing the very same subjective process Nold was engaging in too screamed with a great deal of irony.

If you would rather deal with your geeks from afar you might prefer to wade through the ramblings of a work in progress online.  While combing through the search engines you may find one "project" of interest taking shape in the form of another vox blog.  At http://jimmys.vox.com this unnamed neighbor of ours is gathering information from the landscape using a wireless laptop. The idea here is to gather the names of "localized" wifi spots as raw material and publish them in an aesthetically pleasing way.   While the focus of this artist's output is in flux it appears that 2-D and video work is being produced.  A couple of these are available for viewing at the website. 
One 2-D representation seems to be a direct emulation of Piet Mondrian's Boogie Woogie Broadway which is being visualized as an interactive interface.  One of the videos on the site pan across a map with an robotic narrator reciting the names of wireless networks at each intersection.  Others on the site without audio, trace a dotted path across a dark colored screen in a repeating loop.  These play out as charmingly abstract Atari type video games.  This is a blog so not all ends are tied together but the concepts being bandied about relate to the mathematical concepts of Euler paths - descriptive links are provided for the adventurous.  In addition to adapting Mondrian into spreadsheet from is the nonsensical "poetic verse" being posted at the site.  A couple audio files of these have been posted using similar speech bots make them entertaining. 

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