This project was about slow looking and rethinking the idea of a traditional map to include sensory information. I really struggled a lot with this project because it was so complicated to visually reflect other senses without deliberately putting images of observations on the map. For my destination, I chose to direct the viewers to a tree that I had seen on High Street a few days prior because it was the very first tree to change color in the whole group of trees in that area. At the time of this project, fall was just beginning to show through. The tree just so boldly proclaimed its difference from the other trees and it really spoke to me. I chose to make a series of videos in which I explained the directions to my location in American Sign Language. I learned ASL in high school as my foreign language requirement and I have been so passionate about it ever since & I truly desire to advocate for the deaf in any way I can. Although deaf people may not have trouble looking at a map and finding their destination, I wanted to communicate the sounds of the birds, cars, and crunching leaves to them because they would not otherwise be able to know those are there. The idea of fall that we have as a society is so heavily based on other senses besides vision, like the smell (candles, leaves, rain), taste (pumpkin, vanilla, Thanksgiving food), hearing (crunching leaves, rain), and I aimed to portray those ideas visually through my map. I did so with the texture created with the foil I added, the texture of the beginning/end, and the “flipbook” that shows the tree in different seasons.
View full process here.
Full composition, showing all qr codes, map context, the key, and the tree that changes seasons.
