{"id":160052,"date":"2025-11-03T07:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T07:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/160052\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T07:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T07:16:07","slug":"cartography-beyond-terrain-charts-beyond-the-earths-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/160052\/","title":{"rendered":"Cartography Beyond Terrain’ charts beyond the Earth\u2019s surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not all maps chart the Earth\u2019s surface \u2014 and the David Rumsey Map Center\u2019s newest exhibition in Green Library proves<\/a> just that.<\/p>\n

The exhibit \u201cAbove & Below: Cartography Beyond Terrain\u201d opened<\/a> on Oct. 8 in conjunction with the fifth biennial Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography. Nine contributors to the exhibition presented at the conference, leaving their collections, which were all focused on the theme of non-traditional mapmaking, to the center. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re all connected by the fact that they do not have traditional surface terrain cartography,\u201d said assistant curator Kristina Larsen, who spearheaded the exhibition. \u201cBut they all approach this topic from a pretty different angle.\u201d<\/p>\n

True to the exhibition\u2019s name, some of the talks and corresponding collections dive below the surface, depicting the seafloor and underground caves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his collection \u201cThe Limits of Early Modern Vision,\u201d Austrian Academy of Sciences historian Johannes Mattes compiled historic cave maps from Slovakia, Hungary and Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these cave maps have accurate information in them that\u2019s useful for navigating inside of the caves, but all of it\u2019s got an element of invention to it because they didn\u2019t know how deep they were,\u201d Larsen said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of as they experienced it, not technically measured like contemporary cartography would be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other collections look upward.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of \u201cThe Evolving View & Mapping from Above,\u201d Colorado School of Mines professor Angel Abbud-Madrid collected historical maps of the moon and two samples of simulated moon dust. The map refers to the dark parts of the moon as \u201cmare\u201d or \u201cthe ocean,\u201d and the light as \u201cterra\u201d or \u201cthe land,\u201d the same names still given to moon dust today.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis talk was interesting because it was about how we\u2019ve made images of space objects, including the moon, and how those views have changed over time,\u201d Larsen said. \u201cIt was like a long view of people looking at the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Historian Lucas Schultz\u2019s collection \u201cMapping Anthropogenic Weather\u201d pairs depictions of contrails and nuclear fallout with his own map about a 19th-century practice in the Alps in which small town residents shot cannons at storm clouds in an attempt to control the weather. Through the collection, Schultz endeavored to visually analyze this belief system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis diagram is basically about how this idea that they had seemed to be supported by the way the weather behaved but that it was all because of the topography in the area,\u201d Larsen said. \u201cThey were shooting things at them and then cherry-picking evidence in support of the idea that this was working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niles Dorn, the center\u2019s cartographic collections and technology specialist, said this variety in topics made \u201cAbove & Below\u201d unique.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince all of the different sections of the exhibition are drawn from or created from the different talks from the conference, there\u2019s really a whole range of topics and ideas,\u201d said Dorn. \u201cYou might find one that you don\u2019t find interesting and look two feet to the right and there\u2019s something that you think is really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some visitors said staff like Dorn made visiting the exhibition a positive experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people here are very, very good,\u201d said Paulo Moriconi, who attended a guided tour with his son. \u201cThey gave us a lot of information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Visitors can view the exhibit from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays and 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays. Guided tours are offered<\/a> at 2 p.m. on select Fridays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cater towards people who have never thought about maps before and try to get people excited to share our own enthusiasm about maps, both contemporary and historic,\u201d she said. \u201c[The exhibition] should be written at a level where it\u2019s pretty understandable to people, even if they don\u2019t have a lot of prior knowledge about these topics.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not all maps chart the Earth\u2019s surface \u2014 and the David Rumsey Map Center\u2019s newest exhibition in Green…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[92986,92987,92988,92989,92990,92991,92992,6599,18,2037,92993,19,17,92994,69758,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-160052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-above","9":"tag-above-below","10":"tag-barry-lawrence-ruderman","11":"tag-below","12":"tag-cartography","13":"tag-david-rumsey-map-center","14":"tag-david-rumsey-map-collection","15":"tag-earth","16":"tag-eire","17":"tag-exhibition","18":"tag-green-library","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-maps","22":"tag-stanford","23":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115484543478771232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}