Mappare flussi e spazi. Immagini dinamiche e mappe digitali. Mapping the Flowing Space. Dynamic Images and Digital Maps

Denis Cosgrove, in the book Mappings, edited in 1999, highlights the correspondence between the map and the whole of graphical features able to connect two kinds of different spaces, whose result is a representation space. Further, if mapping is conventionally linked to measuring, it is also the true that the measure is not only mathematical in nature: mapping can describe the world in a tangible or intangible way, in a real or desired mode, partially or wholly, and finally, allows to experience reality in many different ways. So, mapping seems to enter the fields of Humanities and Cultural Studies, thus corresponding with a non-neutral and informational action, rather with a selective act, which is taking in consideration choices, omissions, additions (Jacob, 1992). Economic change produced by technological progress in the informational field, as in the media and flexible system production ones, also cause a new experience about the sense of space, triggering a clear break as regards the “fixed space”, coherent to boundary’s definition and traditional mapping. It is the spatial “flow” to sign the experience over the last XX century (Cosgrove, 1999). This new spatiality makes obsolete geographical codes and topographical practices of mapping, at the same time it boosts new forms of cartographical representation able to express qualities coming from new spatial structures. An implicit call today addressed to mapping is to achieve in representing the spatial stability in a world characterized by spaces and structures fundamentally nonstable: as consequence, the same idea of mapping should be radically re-thought also investigating among the “seeing” techniques and the graphical production of images. The role of mapping should be less and less tracing and re-tracing worlds already known, and more and more unveiling new worlds beyond the old ones; it should be a means of emancipation and enablement, liberating phenomena and potential from the encasements of convention and habit […] liberating efficacy of creatively aligned cartographic procedures (Corner, 2011). Considering the cultural frame just outlined, this contribution intends to investigate about the role of dynamic images and digital maps can today have in the field of representation of the “flowing space” characterizing the contemporary age.