The Atlas as Hunting Ground

In simplest terms, we set out to distill and disaggregate the geometries - the points, lines, and polygons - that define this complex cartographical object. We extracted each element of the atlas, wrenching villages away from the roads around which they clustered, abstracting whole layers of information from their assigned symbologies, mercilessly lopping off titles and legends and any other evidence of the material context of each page.

In the world of GIS there is an astounding payoff to what might seem an utterly reductive - and possibly violent - process. The beauty of disaggregation is that it recreates the original, physical, map as a complex digital object: an object that can be studied and annotated, surely, but one that can also be manipulated, transformed, and analyzed using an entirely different set of tools.

The sketches in this section describe the process of transforming a 19th century atlas into a geographic information system - in other words, of developing a mechanism whereby a 19th century map can be put into dialogue with GoogleEarth (or any other modern basemap). I have kept the sketches as short as possible for the sake of readability, but could easily go on for days and weeks about the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the process. [You are very welcome to use the comment tool to initiate discussion.]