# Mapping Meditations workshop

:::warning
This collaborative document uses the Markdown syntax in order to render text, images, and other content. Learn more about [how to use HackMD](https://hackmd.io/@turingway/hackmd-guide) and what Markdown is here. We'll be using HackMD specifically because of its ability to render photos throughout this exercise.
:::

## Agenda

==These exercises will require a pen :lower_left_ballpoint_pen: or pencil :pencil2: and a few sheets of paper (ideally not lined). Please grab them now before we get started. If you plan, please stay a quiet space (ideally with headphones!) for the duration of this exercise.==

- Welcome & sign-in [00:00 - 00:05]
- Warmup: Sonic Meditation [00:05-00:15]
- Presentation: About Poetic Tactics [00:15-00:20]
- Introduction to exercises [00:20-00:25]
- Exercise 1 [00:25-00:30]
- Exercise 2 [00:30-00:35]
- Exercise 3 [00:35-00:45]
- Close: Feedback & Discussion [00:45-00:50]

## Sign-in

**Name + Pronouns + Location + What do 'maps' bring to mind for you + an emoji ([emoji cheatsheet](https://github.com/ikatyang/emoji-cheat-sheet/blob/master/README.md) or write `:desired-emoji` and a list should automatically come up)**

==I will add a number to your name - if you could add that to your zoom name as well, we'll be using that later!==

* 1 - [name=Anne] + she/they + London, UK + maps always make me think of this quote 'the map is not the territory' & [this poem by adrienne rich](https://poets.org/poem/diving-wreck)
* 2 - [name=Linda] + they/them + Gießen, DE + when I think of maps I think of maps of getting lost, maps to imaginary landscapes, derivé, psychogeography
* 3 - [name=Maya] + She/her + Tel Aviv, Israel + "What is absent in maps" +
:thunder_cloud_and_rain:
* 4 - [name=julian]+ he/him + Zurich, Swizerland + time and a coiling snake
* 5 - [name=Dylan] + he/they + Berlin,DE + "the map is not the territory!", Borges, Deleuze&Guattari, being nimble with maps, keeping them temporary, healthy distrust,
* 6 - [name=chris] + he/him + Seoul, South Korea + i always think of "music for airports", both the visual motif and the visual score on the album artwork embody the different ways maps can take form (are the audio pieces themselves maps? i'm not sure... i think so?)
* 7 - [name=Amy] + she/her + Rotterdam, Netherlands + "atlas or globes, something big is scope and scale"
tly make believe. Also of feeling stuffy after a long afternoon in the car with my dad folding out a big paper A
* 8 [name=Mariam]+ she/her + Berlin, DE + I think of mind maps and making sense of complex sets of informations, way-finding
* 9 - [name=Iggy] + they/them + London + maps make me think of getting lost + the Ocean Vuong quote 'Underneath the grid is a field — it was always there — where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more'.+ :paw_prints:
* 10 - [name=Châu]+she/her + Hanoi, Vietnam + thing can be changed by a g
* 11- Viviane she/her - Berlin - geography, dream, expansion, but also limitation of the scale of the body
* 12- [name=Nicole] + she/her + Berlin - poetic landscapes,
* 13- [name=Cassie] - she they berlin - i love it when i stop being maps, after i learn them and can begin to intuit the place
*
+ we are *

# Warmup

## Sonic Meditation

> Deep Listening is listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, or one's own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening represents a heightened state of awareness and connects to all that there is.
> -[Pauline Oliveros](https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu/deep-listening/pauline-oliveros/)

Listen to the sound being played. Close your eyes. (I'll walk you through these questions!)
* What does the sound contain? What are you hearing? What does it remind you of?
* Can you place the sound and where it comes from?
* What does the landscape look like where this sound comes from? What colors or smells are in that space?
* Where are you placed in that space? Where are you standing? What are you touching?

Notes:
* a market space, crowded but smells like home
* construction site in a village; close to it might have a water site;
* I'm staying at a friends house and there are many unfamiliar sounds coming from her balcony - drilling, birds, people shouting, so it was interesting for this kind of 'organic' life sound to also be coming from the computer screen. To me it feels like life in action, being in pub
* the weather: sunny, everyone chatty, felt like i could hear the sunshine, birds
* like the market near my house in rush hour. people rushing to by food to cook din
* a busy market, but i'm sitting on the sunny pavement on a little plastic chair, the air is dusty, i'm watching people chatting, working, commuting

# About the 'Poetic Tactics' project :art:
> poetic tactics to counter extraction (alternative title: poetic tactics to train attention) aims to bring together a body of work that aims to answer the question: how do we counter the embodied ethos of extraction? how can we gather existing techniques – and develop new ways of engaging with our bodies to combat extraction’s effects? how can the metaphor of poetry can be used to combat the abstraction of datafication? when physical extraction is constitutive of digital culture, as well as a pervasive ethos and social norm, what role can poetry (and poetic tactics) play? ([Project page](https://www.schoolofcommons.org/labs/poetic-tactics) & [introduction slideshow](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1srki1Vo-bTA5mO-26-0-qRFSRewX28MGBKFqb3HQzIg/edit#slide=id.g2d1bbb3f709_0_96))

The 'Poetic Tactics' project is a series of counter-tactics. In many ways, the project is increasingly becoming about using methods of abstraction & metaphor that are often used to dehumanise or extract (data, resources, time, etc) in order to bring people together, and train our attention towards something better. After all (from Audre Lorde): *"Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought."*

**Upcoming dates**
* 'Trace' ([preview media](https://photos.app.goo.gl/1iuX3TKZN8WsWov98)) - Mozilla Festival House Amsterdam - June 2024
* 'Oil Spill Epigraphs' (no preview yet - sorry!) - EASST-4web - July 2024
* Surveillance / Listening Walk (London, UK) - Planned for August 2024

# Exercises

## Why maps?

We often associate maps with cartography, the art and science of graphically representing a geographical area on a flat surface.

Such as the [Tabula Rogeriana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Rogeriana) by Muhammad al-idrisi:

But while cartography is steeped in particular histories of exploration and conquest of land and sea, people have always tried to make sense of the spaces in which they live. The act of making maps is not the same as cartography, just as any 2D attempt to render a 3D space will always be incomplete. The map is not the territory.

Maps can be made to counter established understandings of the world, such as was the case with McArthur's University Corrective Map of the World (take a look at the 'map wars' – and the battle between the Mercator Projection and the Galls-Peter Projection!):

Maps are also being made using new technologies like satellite imagery, for a variety of purposes:

They can be used to navigate through a field of knowledge, a topic, or a supply chain, like this [Cartography of Generative AI](https://cartography-of-generative-ai.net/):

They can also be ways of structuring movement, as is the case with [dance notation](https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/time-motion-symbol-line):

Today, we'll be using these mapping methods in order to mediate on the very small: our selves, our days, and our spatial selves.

## Introduction to 'Mapping Meditations'

These meditations were inspired by and draw from Pauline Oliveros' *Sonic Meditations*.

They will require a pen :lower_left_ballpoint_pen: or pencil :pencil2: and a few sheets of paper (ideally not lined). Please grab them now before we get started. If you plan, please stay a quiet space (ideally with headphones!) for the duration of this exercise.

## Exercise 1: Mapping the self

Using your piece of paper, map the choreography of your movements ~~yesterday~~ today.

You can interpret this however you would like. It could be the physical movement you took yesterday, where your mind went (literally). This can take any form that you would like, using shapes, figures, or any notation that feels right.

*Show map on Zoom screen if you'd like!*

Notes
*
* I've had a day that isn't particularly typical to my routine (travel) so it was interesting to map the slower/faster, higher energy/lower energy, sitting/standing/walking/remaining stationary movements
* I was in so many places today, and I was so exhausted, but it was somehow exciting to bring my movement and places into this paper. Makes me want to do it everyday. So different than writing about my day. A different way to process it.
*
* My map was my physical movement between couch-kitchen-bed-park, beneath some grumpy clouds on the one side and moments of flow on the other which ended up being a nice gratitude practice
* the drawing felt more like a diagram the movement felt more like my day

## Exercise 2: Navigating self, choreographing maps

Within the confines of your current space, use your map to recreate the movement you have drawn.

1. Try and do this movement slowly. Move as if your feet have ears.
2. Move quickly, like you're in a rush! Hurry hurry hurry!

Notes
*
* The choreography was fascinating because I was mapping my energy levels from throughout the day within the energy level I have now. So initially I thought I'd do something that required a lot of movements and gesture, but then realised that wasn't realistic to my energy levels now so instead went for much smaller scale, minor movements
* My living room bacame my city.
* It amazed me that i felt the map with my body and remembered the movements when moving it really fast.
*

## Exercise 3: Mapmaking, together

Within the time that we have left, we may try to make a number of maps together, and learn from each others maps.

Each of you have a number next to your name. Using a random number generator, one person will be selected to share their map with the group.

Together we'll try to mimic the movement of their map.

Now repeat!

Notes
*
*
*

# Closing

If you'd like to send your map to be uploaded to this page or to a broader collection, please email them to me at [e-mail] (or if on your computer – drag & drop directly) :world_map:

## Pluses
**What did you enjoy?**
*
*
*

## Deltas
**What would you change?**
*
*

# Resources:
- Blog from Solidarity Infrastructures course at School for Poetic Computation: https://www.aleesteele.com/blog/2024/03/20/solidarity-infra
- Sonic Meditations by Pauline Oliveros: https://www.soundportraits.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Oliveros_Pauline_Sonic_Meditations_1974.pdf
- School of Commons intro presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1srki1Vo-bTA5mO-26-0-qRFSRewX28MGBKFqb3HQzIg/edit#slide=id.g2d1bbb3f709_0_96