Mapping Material Culture

Blandy and Bolin’s article Looking At, Engaging More: Approaches for Investigating Material Culture gives heavy focus to different ways of examining material culture. This can be a useful approach in making art relevant to kids in a classroom setting. I think that the cognitive approach described (p. 44) is especially intriguing. I would like to focus on the “mapping” aspect that was described.

Outdated maps are examples of material culture that
give us insight to changing political and cultural realities.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_europe.html

Maps both reflect material culture and are a part of material culture themselves. Old maps are artifacts that give us insight into the contemporary beliefs of that era. They tell us about people’s perceptions of reality and what is valued enough to emphasize. We can also make maps ourselves that help us to understand material culture.

I think that mapping is an extremely interesting way of combining art and context. It allows one to examine a place or even an abstract concept in an exploratory way and to make connections. It can help to connect one to his or her environment through representation. I was really intrigued by the example in the article of creating a multi-layered map that showed different senses. This forces students to focus on all sensory experiences, not allowing one to overpower or dominate. This is an example of how art can be a tool for learning through exploration. It causes them to slow down and actually pay attention to what is around them.

I personally have made a few maps for art classes, and have often made the mistake of being overly literal. I think that this is the kind of exercise that will become more meaningful the more it is done. For a drawing class, I had to make a metaphorical map. I ended up doing a map of the area where I live, and mine ended up being far too literal of a representation. I did not get out of the project what my professor had intended. I did, however, have a much better understanding of where I spent my time and what was important to me to put on the map. I realized that my house is much less central to everything than I thought. This seems like a silly and unimportant realization. But what this really made me realize is the impact that mapping can have on our awareness. There is something about visually laying something out in context that provides a kind of objective clarity. It provides perspective. 

Partially completed map of the history of art education

For an Art Education class, we mapped the history of art education. I did not have any expectations of the project going into it; I saw it as a project to demonstrate mastery of the content. After completing the map, I realized that it did more than that. It synthesized the knowledge that I had gained into a more cohesive, more educated form. It made the difference between having knowledge of specific topics and being more educated about the history of education. It provided a cognitive understanding that I would not have gained otherwise–or at least not so quickly. 

This mind map explores the topic of education.

In my graphic design class, we are currently working on a project based on “mind-mapping.” This visual mapping of ideas that branch off of each other allows one to expand upon ideas in a way not possible without a visual aid. It also helps to make connections.

Mapping is a powerful tool that can be used to enhance our understanding of our environment and abstract concepts. It can also help us to cognitively generate new knowledge and synthesize existing knowledge together in new ways.

_____________________________________________________________________________

This is a link to a website about mind mapping:

http://www.mindmapping.com/