Two years ago, not-for-profit organizations Recyclart, City Mine(d), Constant, and the graphic designers from Speculoos launched the project “Towards a subjective collective cartography,” whose aim is to examine questions concerning the subjective representation of the territory of Brussels and to promote the passing on, exchange and pooling of those questions…

Currently, the project is carried out following two different trends: on one hand the creation of an atlas of Brussels and, on the other hand, the conception of a software (TRESOR).

A cartographic software: the question of connection.

The creation of a software also brings with it the question of classification (notably the way in which cartographic data is entered on the on-line service), however with an additional difficulty: the difficulty of the interaction and superposition of maps that have a variety of degrees of subjectivity and of systems of coordinates, the interest being their intercommunication. Maps may indeed represent the same territory to very different scales and at very different moments. And the same is true for two objects, which may be physically far away from each other and still mentally close. Consequently, how to connect and to intermingle maps that have different spatial, temporal or mental projections? It would be possible to connect them by defining the transverse elements between the maps, i.e. common features or zones of reference. But this spatial world that is divided between several maps tears when there is no correspondence left. How to manage that tear, which is for that matter interesting? And would it be possible to deform those maps in order to create new correspondences? In that case, which map would serve as a frame? Would it have to be spatially referenced?