Knowledge Cartography is part of a PhD research on the visual representation
of knowledge. The aim of the research is to extend the cartographic metaphor
beyond visual analogy, and to expose it as a narrative model and tool to
intervene in complex, heterogeneous, dynamic realities, just like those of
human geography.The map is thus not only a passive representation of
reality but a tool for the production of meaning. Just like a text, the map
makes selections on reality, distorts events, classifies and clarifies the
world in order to selections better tell a particular aspect of a territory,
an event, a space.
The images shown here are screenshots taken from ATLAS,
the application that's being developed to explore the possibilities of the
application of a cartographic metaphor to the realms of knowledge. The
concept of ATLAS in this context doesn't only depict a list of maps, but
rather a system of representations of space, a communication device aimed at
representing complex contexts through the use of many partial overlapping
narrations: a network of maps, diagrams, texts and peritexts, combined
together to describe the space of research in its multifaceted aspects.
