Nomadic mapping: unfolding nomadic movements in digital performative mapping

Submitted: 15-12-2015

Abstract written together with Arash Ghajarjazi for Virtuality, Becoming and Life – Deleuze Studies Conference, Rome (June 2016)

Nomadic mapping: unfolding nomadic movements in digital performative mapping

The nomad is always prepared to burst forth, at any time, anywhere. How can we think of ways to facilitate nomadic movements? In particular, how can such vermicular movements be materially and strategically enabled through design choices in and uses of digital technologies? This presentation is a collaborative work that thinks through nomadicsim in tandem with techno-tactical possibilities of digital media, with a special focus on digital mapping. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the nomad’s ‘distributive’ movement engenders a space – a nomadic one – which crumbles the space conceived in terms of hierarchy and attribution; that is, the space governed by the Cartesian coordinate system – the space of logos. Nomadicism, in its deviant performances, amounts to a unique way of doing cartography in that it gives rise to novel paths and relations, continually de-territorialising and re-territorialising space. Coupled with digital technologies, mapping-in-praxis attests to a paradigm shift, whereby maps are no longer seen as representations, but as constitutive of multiple agents that can depart from any line and translate into novel legends. A digital map in itself is rhizomatic in that it provides infinite entry and exit points, continually restructuring themselves into different (non-hierarchical) relations. From the perspective of design it is crucial to understand how tactical choices offer the possibility to participate in this digital way of  map-making, enabling humans as well as non-humans to enact the digital map. These becoming-maps rely on the collective performance of agents, in perpetual oscillation between what has been, what is being and what is yet to be drawn. The very process of mapping then potentiates a real-time creation of realities, in which space and time are continuously negotiated; a chronic actualisation of the virtual. In their unfolding, nomadic cartographic lines are performed and legends are becoming. By drawing on a number of application designs, we will demonstrate how digital technologies re-invent the practice of cartography as techno-tactical compositions capable of rendering and enacting unpremeditated movements and cognitions. The reflection will be carried out by interrogating the performativity that is taking place between the corporeal, the technical and the algorithmic undercurrent of the applications so as to examine the designerly tactics in these digital technologies for their potential to facilitate nomadicism.