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9(Nine)
Graham Harwood
 
9 (Nine) (Harwood, Graham), 2003
 
 
 

 

Descartes (1596-1650) probably near Ulm on the Danube has a fever. After a day spent in intense philosophical speculations he falls asleep in an agitated state - three dreams later and his vision produces[1] Cartesian Co-ordinates and within them one of the multiple «origins» of maps. This period is dominated by deadly epidemics and during his time in Paris he would have witnessed 60,000 deaths in Lyon from Typhus and 25,000 deaths in Limoges.

 

Cartesian Co-ordinates are used to input the mouse user position on most windowing environment. Guy Debord, a key Situationist theorist, has caught a cold, some 300 years after Descartes. His infection started after walking around Paris making a series «psycho-geographic guides» in the rain. Recording his aimless wanderings, Debord cuts up and reconfigures a standard Paris map. Reflecting street-level desires and perceptions, mapping alternative itineraries and attempting to subvert what Descartes origin had become. 1988 Stefan Szczelkun walks around cities and produces a series of collaborations called «Duets.»[2] Two people collaborating took a series of 24 «aimless»

 

pictures over the day revealing the subjective city, Harwood among them leaves early due to a stomach ulcer. Spring 1998 Mongrels begin attempting to subvert Descartes origin. Walking around3 Hull and struck by the lack of finds in the emotional fossil record. Take it upon themselves to fill in the space by making emotional maps of the city with other Mongrels met along the way. Richard: «We could make maps of fear or maps of lust.» Matsuko: «Lets plot emotional states onto the position of things.» Harwood: «Lets go for long aimless walks about nothing and go nowhere.» We work four days and calibrate the information into a geography of social Class.

 

Software construction: Note#2 May 98 (a specific need)

We have a specific need that we found doing workshops. We want to have dialogues that allow us to produce fast artefacts of digital culture with other mongrels. A crucial thing we have found in workshops is that people want to produce something that looks good, and means something, but don't want to have to invest months in teaching themselves up to know

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