InvestigationThe GPS has registered them in our daily life. And thanks to visualization software and free access to data, everyone can create their own or engage in participatory mapping.
Continents, islands and archipelagos stand out against the azure blue of the Continuity Sea or the Pandemic Ocean, in a gradient from green to brown highlighting the reliefs: Pantouflie, Googland, the Straits of Carrouf, Zoomfjord, Mount Frozen, the Clubbing desert, the forbidden lands of Sapland… In 12 plates and 20 local maps, theTransconfinemental Atlas of Julien dupont maps the world in coronavirus version.
Not exactly the planisphere that this history and geography teacher pinches on the walls of his priority education college, in Vaulx-en-Velin (Rhône). “With confinement, the inability to travel”, the forty-something who once lived in Egypt felt the call of “Cartographic fiction”. In 2020, he even suggested to his students kept at a distance to activate this escape valve by tracing the outlines of their suddenly shrunken universe. “The sensitive card of their isolation. “
Imaginary or tragically serious, the cards form the backdrop to our daily life under Covid-19. Global spread of contaminations, incidence rate by department, occupancy of intensive care beds, vaccination, death… Department colored in green? Get out. Red zone ? Do not move ! A presidential address? Quickly, trace on the Internet the local perimeter of authorized freedom.
Identify accessible countries on a world map… The virus has ignited a phenomenon that pre-existed it, and that in the Computer Graphics department of the World, Xemartin Laborde sums it up as follows: “The menu is the language of the moment. We have the material that abounds and the techniques of creation. The field of possibilities has opened. ” Warning ! Extension of the cartographic domain in progress.
Adapted to the society of the image
For those who are neither a geographer nor a child in the atlas of the grandfather, in rainy weather and boredom, the map evoked, again yesterday, this boring thing to fold up or to swallow before the ferry. Now the“Information visualization tool” (according to Christine Zanin, lecturer in geography at the University of Paris), proves her perfect adaptation to the society of the image. On social networks, Twitter in the lead, a dusted cartography is exposed, told and seduced. Announces its participatory events (“Mapathon”, “State of the map” …) as so many peaks of hype. Play with winks and challenges: one map per day on a theme imposed in November (# 30daysmapchallenge), a collaborative map of cartographic quotes in literature (#MapQuote), photos of clouds or decrepit facades evoking the outlines of Brittany or Morocco (#Thingsmaps)… “I like”, “I like”, “I like”, Internet users are getting carried away.
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