Chris Eaket: Psychogeography
&
Cybercartography: Project [murmur] and the Performativity of
Space
In The
Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de
Certeau asserts that “what the map cuts up, the story cuts across,”
stressing
the role of a nomadic, storytelling subject in the production of space
(129). The [murmur] project—an
experiment in site-specific psychogeography and cybercartography
(http://murmurtoronto.ca/ )—explores the relationship between spaces
represented cartographically, spaces lived through audience
explorations and
the (imaginary) representational spaces generated through oral
histories. The site-specific stories of
participants transform
reified places into “lived” spaces that the user can explore and
interpret in
real time. [murmur] situates the
subject simultaneously at the site of the referent and within an
imaginary
(aural) space of representation, compelling the audience member to
reconcile the
two; in exploring the representational frame (and its boundaries) the
user
becomes an active participant in the semiotic processes of spatial
production.