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RETROTOPIA
"The map is open, connectable in all its dimensions, and capable of being dismantled; it is reversible, and susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to montages of every kind, taken in hand by an individual, a group or a social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation...
G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, from ' On the Line'
CYCLOGLYPHS are the series of events that are repeated by waking through different places and reacting to geo-spatial situations by forming various shapes with paths and routes taken. Participants of the project use GPS units and instructions with the maps that will enable them to navigate through designated areas of a city or a non-urban landscape and create geo-drawings of the predefined symbols for particular spaces. Shapes that players will repeat by moving (walking, cycling, driving...) could be the icons or representations of various different keywords that are found important for a particular situation. E.g.: Explore, Dérive, Play, Create, Isolate, Fly, Retro and/or Conquer. Each word is contextualized and visualized as a symbol. Apart from this method, CYCLOGLYPHS can employ new ways of seeing and understanding of the urban design, architecture, and topographies of the places around us. We could be mapping cities or non-urban places from a focused and very exclusive militaristic point of view, or by using financial, economical, business, or historical models to analyze those places.
During the sessions, there were three main stages that participants went through: conceptualizing/strategizing, which included planning and defining the ideas and areas, which would be mapped, execution of the plans and walking with GPS units/cameras, and postproduction .
Input/Harvesting
In CYCLOGLYPHS, moving (walking, cycling, car, boat) through any landscape becomes a medium to redefine and conquer places but also to exploit and capture moments that would enable some social changes in the present/future. These conditions, which intersect, communicate and work within each other would create or be formalized in the dematerialized paths and drawings. Their meanings (in contrast to the paths) are very tangible, determined, iconized, and definite. This dematerialization, and at the same preservation of one's paths, thoughts, mappings, moments would create new layers of the information. These layers, with what ever they bear, would aim for changing of the (non) city landscapes and defining new approaches and paradigms in possible changes of the social strata.
Processing
Processing is retro: processors take and employ their own and spatial baggage and render any input they get or any information that is already there.
Retrotopia shows the importance of using the old symbols that could place us back and forth in time. It recreates spaces (also by approaching their multileveled significance) into the future protocols that would locate and localize ways to create in isolation, to conquer in derive, or to explore in play. New paradigms in approaching, mapping, seeing the spaces are created in Retrotopia.
Output/platforms/progressions
During the walks, dematerialization of the route and walking on an imaginary line, would be juxtaposed with a formalization of the GPS data, supported by gathered images, videos, sounds, documents, or actions in the public. Each symbol is placed on a map of the city from which streets and crossroads are taken and used as guidelines for the geo-drawings. Affecting the digital layers and various maps teach us about new ways to redefine and change the urban-scape, social imaginaries, architectural topographies, and spectacles of the cities.