• 1993
• Concept
• Project link

Maps organize information. Most pinpoint geographic locations relative to each other. The Map of Humanity also organizes information, but instead of doing it geographically, the map organizes the locations on the basis of moral, emotional, and cultural significance. The continents of this restructuring rest upon the sea of the unconscious, the stormy basis of our thought. The land that emerges from it's broken into three main continents, each related to an aspect of the human mind: superego, ego, and id. The superego is dominated by our higher aspirations. It is our moral centre, where our sense of compassion, love, and virtue reside. Hope, family, kindness, and beauty dwell here amongst the peaceful fields and tranquil cities. The ego is dominated by reason, rational thought, and order. It is the land of science, where nature is harnessed by the human mind; and order and reason hold sway over emotion and passion. The id is the dark continent, dominated by our primitive, animalistic urges. Here hate, greed, avarice, lust, and bigotry run rampant, and war devolves into atrocity. This is the world of our making, carved out of our actions, built upon the collective achievements of the human race. It is an attempt to map the last six thousand years of human history and thought upon a theoretical geography to discover a sense of what kind of civilization humanity has attained. And like the geography of human nations, it is in constant flux, changing and growing as long as mankind walks the face of the earth. The first version of the map was made as an intaglio print in 1993, but as all the locations had to be written out not only by hand but backwards by hand, the number of locations I could (and was willing to) include was obviously limited. In 2000 I felt I had a computer powerful enough to do a more ambitious, digital version. I pushed it till it reached the limits of what my computer could do, and this accounts for some of the odd errors on the map. That and my own poor spelling. Admittedly, the scope of the idea is so vast it is unquestionably impossible to fully realize, but an interesting piece can still result from the effort. It is the journey that counts. A lot has happened since 2001, and eventually it will have to be updated again. There is lots to fix, lots to add, lots to update. The Map of Humanity 3.0 I envision as a collaborative effort. This is my fantasy version, so big in scope as to be just silly. Well. Sillier, at any rate. A vast database of information would be assembled with the help of experts knowledgeable in mythology, literature, urbanology, and, well, everything. It would then be run through a computer program and plotted out. A fractal program could generate the coastlines. Some kind of clustering filter would have to be applied to the locations to get interesting landmasses out of the input. It could be updated every year or two. New land formations, new mountains, rivers, and roads would appear as events unfold, old ones wither away. Cities would change location as what they symbolize changes. I think that would be really neat. Description of Unique Features: From the mythical cradle of human thought in the Garden of Eden, to the farthest reaches of human imagination, the map plots out mankind’s achievements, trials, and tribulations throughout history. We have constructed a world made up of our own actions and beliefs, as much as the one formed by the land we live on. The map of humanity is formed by our thought, our feelings, our dreams, and our nightmares. Data Used: Everything I could get my hands on. Limited by my ignorance and laziness. Data Analysis Techniques Applied: Flawed but ambitious.