Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An exploration of walking and mapping as both form and content in art projects using old and new technologies, shoe leather and GPS.

From Guy Debord in the early 1950s to Richard Long, Janet Cardiff, and Esther Polak more recently, contemporary artists have returned again and again to the walking motif. Today, the convergence of global networks, online databases, and new tools for mobile mapping coincides with a resurgence of interest in walking as an art form. In Walking and Mapping , Karen O'Rourke explores a series of walking/mapping projects by contemporary artists. She offers close readings of these projects--many of which she was able to experience firsthand--and situates them in relation to landmark works from the past half-century. Together, they form a new entity, a dynamic whole greater than the sum of its parts. By alternating close study of selected projects with a broader view of their place in a bigger picture, Walking and Mapping itself maps a complex phenomenon.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Series Foreword (p. xi)
• Preface (p. xiii)
• Introduction (p. xvii)
• Pedestrians and Cartographers (p. xvii)
• Top-Down or Bottom-Up? (p. xviii)
• Choice of Artworks (p. xix)
• Structure of the Book (p. xix)
• 1 Psychogeography: The Politics of Applied Pedestrianism (p. 1)
• Drifting for an Hour in Orléans-La-Source (p. 1)
• Psychogeography: A Toolbox for Reading (p. 6)
• Playful Pedestrianism (p. 12)
• From Poaching to Protest: Walking the Cutting Edge (p. 14)
• Remaking the World? (p. 25)
• 2 A Form of Perception or a Form of Art? (p. 27)
• Walking and Falling (p. 27)
• The ABCs of Movement (p. 28)
• A Walk as an Experience (p. 33)
• Artist's Experience and Viewer's Experience (p. 38)
• The Art of Walking (p. 43)
• 3 A Map, No Directions (p. 47)
• Walking Protocols (p. 47)
• Shaped Walks (p. 48)
• Executing a Figure in the Landscape (p. 49)
• On the Beaten Path (p. 51)
• Due East: Walking the Compass (p. 56)
• The Walk and the Artifact (p. 57)
• Contemporary Travelogues (p. 60)
• So Near, So Far (p. 68)
• Closing the Circuit: A Walk as a Gestalt (p. 71)
• 4 Directions but No Map (p. 73)
• Instructions and Scores (p. 73)
• When the Precursors Are Followers (p. 79)
• Bottom-Up Walking (p. 81)
• "If-Then" Procedural Walking (p. 81)
• Negotiated Walking (p. 87)
• Street Games: Teleguided Theater (p. 91)
• Delving into the Black Box (p. 98)
• 5 When Walking Becomes Mapping: Labyrinths, Songlines (p. 101)
• Cognitive Mapping (p. 101)
• No Playing in the Labyrinth (p. 103)
• Corridors: Itineraries of Oppression (p. 105)
• Lost in the Funhouse: Mirror and Media Mazes (p. 107)
• Labyrinths and Maps (p. 110)
• Wayfinding as Learning as Remembering (p. 112)
• Mapping Edges and Boundaries (p. 113)
• Tracking and Pathfinding (p. 117)
• Making One's Way: An Aesthetics of Cognitive Mapping (p. 122)
• 6 Lines Made by Walking (p. 123)
• Urban Trails (p. 123)
• Drawing Lines with Locative Media (p. 124)
• Early Work with Mobile Technologies (p. 125)
• Playing the City: Riffs on Real Time (p. 130)
• Drawing by Walking (p. 132)
• Annotating Space: Site-Specific Documentary (p. 143)
• 7 Hybrid Datascapes: Envisioning Space and Time (p. 153)
• Drawing with Time and Space (p. 154)
• Hybrid Datascapes (p. 161)
• Shifting Perspective (p. 168)
• Smooth Hybridization (p. 172)
• 8 Walking the Network (p. 177)
• Database Cartography (p. 177)
• Image Maps: Maps as Interfaces (p. 177)
• Dynamic Maps (p. 187)
• Participative Mapping (p. 189)
• Maps in Which You Are the Cartographer (p. 194)
• Mapping Performatively (p. 197)
• Mapping as Context Creation (p. 199)
• Linking the Maps (p. 204)
• 9 Mapping "Ways Through" (p. 207)
• The Trouble with Linking the Maps (p. 207)
• Surveillance, Control, (Mis)Trust (p. 209)
• Regaining Agency: Shifting Lines of Force (p. 230)
• Conclusion (p. 245)
• The Art of Alter-Mapping: Context (p. 245)
• A Map for Listening (p. 246)
• Maps and Trajectories (p. 247)
• Notes (p. 249)
• Bibliography (p. 305)
• Index (p. 321)