A fine early example of an interactive map is Daniel Spoerri's "Topographie Anecdotée du Hasard" (An Anecdoted Topography of Chance). On october 17th, 1961, the artist drew a map of the state of his table at 15h47, in room 13 of the Hotel de Carcassonne in the Rue Mouffetard in Paris, where he was living and working at the time.
Spoerri then went on to describe in great detail each of the (80 + 17) objects that at that moment in time were on his table. He gave not just a factual description, but an anecdotal one, that is: including his memories and associations. Thus Spoerri's Carcassonne table topography became a fascinating sketch of the - or at least: his - universe around 1961, that can be accessed interactively: view the map, pick an object, and then in the book look up the text describing the object.
Last week, during a residency at Les Atliers Claus in Brussels, together with Jean-Jacques Duerinckx, I constructed a homolog of the Carcassonne table. Other than a mere carbon copy, our Spoerri table is an instrument (there is a series of contact microphones built into the table's top and some of the objects). As an instrument it will be put to use in a series of performances of our "A Table!" later this year. Each of these performances will start from the original state of the table (as it was on october 17th, 1961 at 15h47), and have time and the table evolve again from there, branching out, always in a different manner, as it might have done in one of a multitude of parallel universes.
Here's a picture of the current (not yet completely finished) version of our copy of the table, as it was on friday march 26th:
Daniel Spoerri celebrated his 80th birthday on saturday march 27th.
next: A Map Is Not A Trap
