One can go on about different map types, how they are pc or not, what they show and what they leave off, and how they make us view the world and also change it.

A very basic example is the comparison between a map of a city, which usually shows streets, lakes, parks, names of suburbs, and a subway plan that has the routes of different public transportation systems and their intersections on it. Although it interacts with the geographic map, it won’t show us underneath which streets and places the subway goes or the exact connections between two routes at an intersection station.

Google maps now introduced a layer which does exactly that, linking geographic maps to subway plans, linking the underworld to the daylight. It opens an underground-perspective on cities. By doing so, it makes our perception of our close environment a bit more real…does it really?

Ivan Vladislavic in “The restless supermarket”, p 19.

the pool tastes like salt

the wines are unbelievable

on sunday afternoons

…

you can’t run your distance

too damn hot

too little oxygen

too much pollution

…

traffic

homeless bagging for change

stadic – slow – robot

keep it in first gear at a red light

…

armed response

alarms going off

“adt here, we’re sensing something from your beams”

“thanks for calling, that was the dog/roommate/me”

Of course each it is one of the basic parts of a room’s definition: to be three dimensional. But nonetheless all of us know the feeling of pressure in flat and deep rooms. They usually have no acoustic, no view, no atmosphere.

Maybe a good shape for a room is a cube. Because the other extreme, which would be a tower, is interesting and abnormal, but somewhat uncomfortable as well. No, it needs to be a cube, a cube with natural materials, a history and interesting shapes to stand or sit on, that give it the 3^rd dimension.

The history is fascinating as well, why? I don’t now. A room that used to be only functional, and then has it’s function be transformed into something new, something for people to enjoy, something to listen to music in, to party, to enjoy…isn’t that the greatest type of room there is? Isn’t that the highest art of putting solid borders around a chunk of space? And isn’t that the highest, a retired room can become?

I believe it is.

But, really, does it still matter what we have seen, touched, smelled? Or is it enough to know something is there, in order to somehow be aware of it, to make it real. (Like…let’s say: Swine flu.)

Maps are one of the things that highly influence the way we imagine the world to be. And they are real in many ways, but leave the wrong impression in others.

What’s your map of the world?

What’s in it’s center? What’s on the edge? Are you the type of person who knows exactly their local environment or is your map a set of national islands?

Go for it, take a piece of paper, draw it! Those maps you know from National Geographic or google are as true or false as yours will be. Forget those weather maps, those political maps, forget your town’s bus-plan. What’s a weather map worth, if everyone deals with the weather differently? What’s the reality of a political map, if some of us live in transnational realities?

Here’s a few attempts to develop a picture of the world as I know it. I refrained from commenting them.

An idea to start with: What is more important to you when you think about distance between two places? The geographical distance or is it the time it takes for you to travel from one place to the other? I would always go with the last one. If we take a look at the understanding of distance in northern America, let’s say a person from Des Moines, Iowa in the Midwest of the USA is asked how far it is to Chicago, Illinois, he or she will be likely to say something like “It’s six to seven hours”. And why should the geographical distance matter to us, considering that one can travel from Cologne to Frankfurt (two major Germany cities, about 200 km apart) 1h in a train, while it can take much longer to get from Frankfurt to it’s airport by car during rush hours. “Distance” has obviously become a synonym for “estimated time it takes to travel from A to B by a common way of transportation”.

It’s a given that transportation has changed dramatically over the course of the last century. While in history, certain places might have been the metropolises of a certain region, places one didn’t travel to, unless there was the annual fair or an event of similar size and importance. One usually stayed within the village one was born in. Only (so called) Gypsies and traders traveled on a regular basis. My own parents, who grew up in Germany’s the countryside in the 40s only traveled to the see their aunts once a year – to a place which was about 15 km from their hometown. So we see, that through technological improvement space (and time) have drastically changed their meaning. Both have always been a construct, but no process shows us how constructed they were until globalization.

Back to the two towns of Aswan and Oldenburg. Both are only at the far end of their country if one wears the nation-glasses. It’s the state which builds roads, train tracks, and other transportation technology. Once upon a time people wore different glasses, back in the days, when Oldenburg and Aswan were little metropolises of their region. They were the capital of trade, culture and power. But the world has changed, although geography hasn’t. And often, one has to admit, that the thoughts of the people living in those cities on the edge hasn’t changed either. The world around them has moved on, but they still act like they are metropolises of their region while they are little villages at the end of a dead-end-road – from a global perspective.

Aside from this being one of the dumbest things he did since he lifted the excommunication of the holocaust denier Richard Williamson, one has to ask a simple question:

Why does Benedikt still comment on a game he is not allowed to play in?