Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Mapping (Me)lbourne: Week One


Once upon a time mapmakers thought the world had edges. Beyond the edge the maps were inscribed with the words: Here be monsters! Where are the monsters in our maps of Melbourne? Where are the enchanted areas? 


This was the first workshop in the course. Eventually we are going to create an alternate map of a corner of Melbourne, but first things first. We had ace cartographer Martin Von Wyss talking about traditional map-making. He talked the group through a range of maps (see photos here)

For our first exercise we each drew a short map of "How I got here". We looked at some examples of artistic maps, talked about psychogeography and why as humans we have the urge to record, catalogue, track etc ... Finally, as a group, we drew a circle around an area of the Melbourne map - keeping Signal well within it - our walk will take place somewhere within the confines of this magic circle.


Homework was a creative writing exercise, a continuation of this line: 

At Flinders Street Station I ...

Mapping Melbourne is a creative writing/mapping course created by Lisa D'Onofrio and Simmone Howell. It will be run at Signal throughout April and May 2013. Information here. For all enquiries contact: writeasrain (AT) zoho (DOT) com or simmonehowell (AT) hotmail (DOT) com


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