Maps Re-imagined: Digital, Informational, and Perceptional Experimentations in Progress

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Authors: Tyng-Ruey Chuang; Chih-Chuan Hsu; Huang-Sin Syu.

Organization: Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica.

Address: 128, Academia Road, Section 2, Nangang 115, Taipei City, Taiwan.

Contact: trc@iis.sinica.edu.tw.

Date: 2019-04-30.

Version: An abstract prepared for and presented at Digital Humanities 2019: Complexities (July 2019, Utrecht, the Netherlands).

Copyright: Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

URL: http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~trc/public/publications/DH2019/.

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Abstract

A map can be thought as the fixture of certain places in a time to an artifact of indefinite longevity. The fixture was completed at the moment when the artifact had been produced. The places depicted on the map, however, can always be re-interpreted. We are interested in technical arrangements about historical maps upon which new possibilities can be experimented. We report on our experience in re-basing and rendering of early 20th Century land survey maps upon the OpenStreetMap technical infrastructure. Successive layers of digitalization and transformation are performed so as to bring out new representations from the old maps. Populated places, road networks, administrative centers and boundaries, water systems and diverse landscaping areas – surveyed and mapped long ago on paper – become digital objects waiting to be examined and navigated online. These places, connecting us to the past as well as to the present, can now be perceived anew.