7.7 KiB
| path | date | title | type | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /posts/the-origin-of-maps | 2016-06-20T23:19:51.246Z | The Origin Of Maps | blog | Max Fowler |
The origin of all maps is direct experience. Direct experience is a source of knowledge and energy which is always available and has no substitute.1
This is a reflection into my ongoing experiments into accessing this well, as a potential form of direct action against the oppressive structures that frequently mediate our world. What are the pathways immediately around us that lead to information being transmitted into our eyes? What effects do these structures have on us? What agency do we have in how we relate to them? What actions can we take today?
Must've skipped the ship and joined the team
For a ride
A couple hours to learn the controls
And commandeer both my eyes
Hey!
A little over a year ago, on November 18th, after drinking a large coffee, in an unusual moment of unifying coherence, I decided that I would try to use a flip-phone for somewhere between three months and a year, along with keeping a journal of emotions that arose for me during the process, marking on a calendar any days where I caved and used my iPhone, building a robotic machine which physically childblocks your iPhone, and creating a collection of all the maps I drew for navigating the city while using the flip-phone.
According to the journal, on December 14th, I imagined titling this collection of activities The Origin Of Maps, here is my note from that day:
12/14/18 (friday)
thought of the title The Origin Of Maps
a reference to direct experience, where all maps, originally, come from
by the time we see an address inputted into Google Maps,
there have been many layers of mediation
The Origin Of Maps invites a return to direct experience
using the flip phone, you have to think of who you want to text or call
like imagining a UI based on blank screen
the only ideas that surface are the ideas that originate from you
In the past year, I experienced a variety of ups and downs, and its hard to say what can really be attributed to using a flip-phone, but I still believe in the potential of more mindfully using (and not using) technology as a healing practice.
A recurring theme was that if I was feeling bad I tended to blame it on the flip-phone and be frustrated by the project, and if I was feeling good then I felt like the flip-phone was a great idea.
This was my note from May 7th:
5/7/19 (tuesday)
speaking with petja about how when I am feeling bad I blame my phone
(i am alienated, i have no friends etc.),
but when I am feeling good
my life feels full and it seems like I have no problem
petja says “i have friends, i am doing ok”
Unfortunately, only the Auslanderbehorde (the German Foreigner’s office which grants Visas) is institutionally verified to really say if I’m doing OK or not.
In the absence of their official opinion, I will leave that for the wind to debate, and instead will share my journal entries from the first 10 days after I decided to use a flip-phone:
day 1 (sunday)
picked up rpi from kleinanzeigen and hung out with mylene
missed on turn on the way to kleinanzeigen pickup,
but used map in my bag to figure out where I had missed the turn
(felt like my rope harness catching me from falling)
day 2 (monday)
took my iphone with me because I wanted to use a weird app
to text a drug dealer about buying weed
which I thought was only available on iphone
but turns out also has desktop version
day 3 (tuesday)
took my iphone with me to studio because I was feeling like texting from the corner of the studio was nice
was feeling unsure about the project,
and frustrated that people were having trouble understanding how I wanted to be reached
in the evening left studio without my smart phone
felt rejuvenated by patty texting me updates
to where the birthday party she was at was,
even though we had been messaging before on telegram.
she understood the system I wanted to use
and laughed and told me it wasn’t that complicated
day 4 (wednesday)
left my iphone at home in the morning
felt excited about project in general as a way to provide some structure and direction to my life
to frame a period of life as research and ritual
day 5 (thursday)
felt good to only have flip-phone during the day
and at night-time while returning to my apartment was excited to see what messages i had received on my iphone
day 6 (friday)
using flip phone feels like gently scuba-diving away from my computer everyday
messaging during the day, it was not so difficult making plans for the weekend
day 7 (saturday)
thought I had memorized directions, but realized I hadn’t memorized what to do after getting out of the u-bahn
successfully navigated the final part by asking strangers on the street for directions
day 8 (sunday)
dan says “you are really making life complicated… flip-phone, veganism”
he tells me he and a friend have been writing a song for fun with the lyrics
“gimme me vegan ramen… fuck u…. vegan doc martens…. fuck u…. Berghain (it used to be better)…. Sysyphous (it used to be better)…. About Blank (it used to be better)”
day 9 (monday)
catherine lost her computer while on vacation and spent a week without computer or phone
she says she feels a bit feral, but in a good way. I feel like I can also feel a difference
she is dreaming of having no laptop, just having her computer be in a physical location where it is used. or of getting a job with her hands, becoming a cook
day 10 (tuesday)
enjoyed getting coffee with Isaac, and baking a sweet potato for myself in the evening. not sure if this deserves to be in the journal or not, but it felt nice to buy a single sweet potato, and take it home and bake it and eat half of it for dinner (with rice and beans) and then eat the other half for breakfast the next day with eggs
—
And here is the zine I made in collaboration with Catherine Schmidt about the possibility of Disconnection Practices as healing practices:
disconnection-practices.pdf
—
I also wrote a bit about ups and downs I went through of wanting to “end the project” and go back to using my smart phone at different points, and how ultimately I “gave up” in May but then two days later I went back to using my dumb phone by choice and I didn’t feel as agitated anymore when it was now no longer part of an experiment but just something I was doing and could stop whenever I wanted. I then continued to use the dumb phone for the rest of the year until November 19, except for a period when I was in the US without a working sim card. I particularly look back highly on the first three months where I felt a lot of excitement and newness. In the months after that it mostly became routine, and the maps I drew became more and more cryptic and utilitarian. I am currently using my smart phone again and I may stop again in the future.
—
In tribute to the power of direct of experience,
M
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As a short philosophical digression, one could argue that even our "direct" visual perception is mediated by culture and our past experience and so in some sense is also not direct. On the other hand, we all know the difference between hearing someone tell you what someone else said (a form of mediation) and hearing it directly. So like many philosophical questions, we can see that there is some ambiguity, but also like touching our nose with our finger or breathing there are lots of things we can do without knowing exactly how we do it, and we can still speak about a spectrum from more direct to less direct in a useful way. ↩︎
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Lyrics from "Alien Days" by MGMT ↩︎