February 01, 2004
This approach requires some commentary, however, which similarly applies to other ‘maps’ or map-like presentations currently in vogue such as OMA’s ‘eurocore’ and ‘volkswagen stadt’; MVRDV (the ‘region maker’); Must (‘euroscapes’); work by Scape and Schie 2.0.(1)
Some of these maps are not just maps or even models of an existing geography but environments and virtual models of data resembling geography, inserted into the morphology of cities and regions. Like the techniques of choreographers, early cinema and the new models of governmentality, the architects of these hyper-real constructs claim to track movement and event in space. In what follows I will first critically examine some of the general characteristics of this style of doing cartography. I will then develop my critique further by focusing on the case of the ‘Ultimate Atlas for the 21st Century’.
Are virtual systems of digital data extraction as independent of interpretations as they seem to be? Quantitative research provides a new type of data which is ideally independent of interpretations, and that is of course also its limitation: it provides data, not interpretation. Our visibility at a typical beach is limited to about a meter, up to ten meters in clear waters like the Caribbean. Even the most sensitive camera could not see the sea floor. Yet we are often confronted with satellite images where features on the sea floor are visible.(2) The earth is a very cloudy planet-at any given time two-thirds of the planet is covered by clouds; yet we are often confronted with satellite images of the earth that are cloud-free.(3) We often see images where the city lights on the night side are brighter than the day-lit countryside, yet it is impossible for one photo to show detail in the daytime and nighttime simultaneously. Pictures and numbers are fused into the production of the manipulable image. Controllable digitized images are built by computers from statistics and formed into pictorial renditions of non-visible worlds. Such pictures create expectations, they predispose us to reason on false premises. Thus, satellites images demand interpretation.
Yet satellite photographs are used to predict the future with absolute certainty independent of interpretation. Recently, for example, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell unveiled some photographs as key pillars in an indictment of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The photograph was taken in May 2002 from a spy satellite about 400 miles (600 km) above the earth, and Mr. Powell offered no room for second-guessing what it might show. The satellite photograph was said to offer concrete and unambiguous evidence of ‘unusual activity’ at a particular site, involving cargo vehicles and ‘a decontamination vehicle associated with biological or chemical weapons activity’. The site, Mr. Powell said, had been used by Iraq ‘for at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities to the field’. In fact, intelligence experts inside and outside government now say that the photograph provides no such concrete evidence. UN inspectors who scoured the site later found no evidence of chemical weapons stockpiles or production. Most experts now believe that the cargo vehicles and the ‘decontamination vehicle’ were most likely tanker trucks and fire engines, used for commercial activities or some kind of rehearsal for weapons production that had not resumed. As this case illustrates, even the most advanced spy satellites provide only one piece of any intelligence puzzle. They can show buildings, but not what is going on inside; they can show vehicles, but not what they are carrying; they can even show people, but not what they know.
In the issue of Wired cited earlier, Mark Leonard describes Koolhaas’s concept of Europe represented by a bar-code.(4) The way value and meaning are communicated here is rather conventional. We find on one single page the union of an image (a signifier: the image of a bar-code) and the concept (signified: the concept of Europe), which gain meaning through their relative position to each other. According to Leonard, the EU and its bureaucrats in Brussels have been busy creating a new political space and giving a new form to a political community ‘that has the power to make the 21st century the European century’.
The central idea here is that Europe is the ‘world’s first viral political space’. But what Leonard means by this apparently novel notion of a viral space is a rather simple and old idea. Europe spreads its power and authority in what Leonard considers to be three innovative ways: first, like an old virus ‘Europe can take over the world’ in an invisible fashion and without provocation; second, like a globally networked business such as Visa, it shares control among a network of many centres of power; and third, it spreads its power through a model of passive aggression ‘in the EU’s backyard’. To state it clearly and simply: this depiction of Europe as a viral political space, and of a viral political space as invisible, polycentric and lacking aggression, is simply wrong.
Let me briefly mention some complications. Leonard’s characterization of a postmodern Europe ignores the fact that Germany, the UK and France retain great-power identities and a willingness to use military force. This suggests that Europe is far from being just ‘a state of mind’ and that its power does not spread through a multiplicity of centres in the invisible fashion Leonard would like it to spread. Immigration policy in Europe (as illustrated by the Dutch policy regarding asylum seekers) and EU trade policy are far from being the model of passive aggression Leonard wants them to be.
Farmers from the developed world receive export subsidies from their own governments, with the sole aim of selling their produce abroad at a lower rate, thereby undercutting local producers. This encourages EU farmers to overproduce. As a result, the world market is flooded with goods (like dairy products) which have been dumped. In ‘wasteland: dump space: freedom from order’ Rem Koolhaas claims to have discovered a new phenomena from a flying helicopter, which he baptized as dump-space. For Koolhaas ‘things and people that are dumped have somehow lost their previous usefulness’. In addition, ‘the dump is free from constraints, from selection, from the tyranny of style’. Yet contrary to Koolhaas’s romantic and postmodern view of the urban dump in Africa, and of dumping in general as shapeless, formless and associated with the worthless, dumping is still a very well formed and useful protectionist trade policy: agricultural subsidies by rich countries and trade barriers prevent producers of cheaper goods from entering the market, and allow EU farmers to sell their goods at higher, over-inflated, subsidised prices. This form of dumping reduces the global price for the commodity, putting farmers from the developing world under even greater strain. With prices artificially lower, these farmers find it even harder to make a profit and are more likely to be put out of business. Thus, dumping is very useful: it helps to create the 1.1 billion people who live on less than $1 a day and who are forced to work and live in the huge urban dump in order to protect their ‘standards of living’ and their chances of survival from being damaged.
Thus, what Leonard and Koolhaas describe as a matter of fact is really a matter of great concern. Now this weak and false concept of Europe as a viral political space is what is to be communicated visually by representing it as a bar-code.(5)The designer offers no room for second-guessing what this concept might mean. He instead assumes that these matters are already well established facts and goes on to represent the concept faithfully.
Carlos Betancourth is urban planner and freelance consultant.
This is an extract from the article “The Map as Saviour. Usefulness and disadvantages of mapping: the case of ‘The Ultimate Atlas for the 21st Century'” in Archis #2 2004.
1. For more on the architect as a map-maker, see MVRDV, Metacity/Datatown, Uitgeverij 010, Rotterdam, 1999; see for the ‘Euroscapes’ of Must the bibliography on p. 114.
2. Because light cannot penetrate deep ocean water, bathymetry measurements -the depth of the oceans-are made from sonar mounted on ships and submersibles, and from space by radar altimeters. These data can then be shaded by a computer to show features on the ocean bottom.
3. Weather satellites that detect red and near infrared light have been collecting data for over twenty years-long enough to produce excellent cloud-free composite images. Furthermore, red and near-infrared data can be combined in a way to simulate color imagery.
4. ‘Combine and Conquer. Euro space: A State of Mind’ in: ‘The Ultimate Atlas for the 21st Century’, Wired (June 2003).
5. Assuming that viral political space is the new and innovative space that Leonard claims it to be, it is paradoxical that the designer chooses to represent this ‘innovation’ with a rather obsolete symbol. Bar-codes only identify groups of products. So, all cans of Diet Coke have the same bar-code more or less. The bar-code was introduced in the early 1970s, but didn’t catch on until Wal-Mart pushed it in the 1980s. Not only is Wal-Mart far from being a postmodern power that spreads invisibly (their supermarkets are rather big!) through many decentralized powers, but the 12-digit bar-code and the retail industry are close to running out of new combinations. We ran out of room with the bar-code!