Paredes 1 Brandon Paredes Josh Nason ARCH 4365 Dec. 3, 2020 Mapping GNS In this reading Owen explains that mapping is more closely related to a snapshot of a time and place rather than a story of history and future. In that sense, mapping has no end and no beginning he explains, and in the specific notions of transportation, communication and networking, the connective systems are the main characters at play as they reveal that space and time are full of tangible data that is only relevant to one as an individual experience and that mapping may be a step in sharing those experiences with one another. One main concept that Owen explains is the abstraction of mapping by means of materialistic suspension or extraction of setting. In different words he explains that maps can remove the reality of the physical such as taking the airplane path of a fighter jet out of the air or the interpretation of cargo ship movement out of the water. Thus, the physical denotation of those acts are abstracted into layers of connective information that becomes laid out in a formulated way so that things such as symbols and text become more through language, feeling and thought. Owen then brings it back to the fundamentals of denotation such as scale, orientation and projection, to connect this idea of subjective narratives within maps. This I find very interesting in terms of reasoning inexplicable vs. fact. Mapping then becomes only but a tool for exploration and less of a tool for dissection. It seems as if one must create some impossible mid ground of information in order to create a truly non-subjective map. When communicating truth through recollection, narrative is forced in mapping; is mapping more human than computational or when does abstraction create untold and non-subjective depictions. Whether it’s through digital technology, scribed notational graphic systems or computational production, I believe that Owen argues representational mapping of any kind positions and formulates our own senses of place, position and things so that a relationship is forged between logical and physical connected between us and the map.
