Tooling up for Complexity - Participatory Mapping: New Data, New Cartography - page 6

According to Christin, it is the image that led to realizing
the expressive potential of writing. Indeed, images have
created a “screen thinking” which preceded the invention of
writing. Christin uses as evidence the spacing between the
elements in medieval paintings, which gave rise to the
discretization between words [CHR 09]. Following this

hypothesis, maps hold a special place as they are a

demonstration of the “graphic unreason” hypothesis:

If, with the invention of the alphabet, writing had
lost the semiotic relations that tied it to its
support, the latter came back through

geographical description. [CHR 95, p.121]

Maps constantly remind us of the graphic origins of
writing as they rely on bringing elements into view and
placing

the distance of the logos to offer a graphic

apprehension of space:

This [cartographic] system is remarkable in that
it reinvents writing by adding a purely visual
procedure to speech - or it shows how useful
writing is by translating its original ideographic
principle […] into cultural terms. Writing is
useful not because of its truthfulness to the art of
memory or discourse - as these operate in
completely different ways - but for its
effectiveness. The usefulness of writing is
conditioned by two rules: the investment of the
gaze in a given space and the emergence within
this space of participating figures, both signs and
symbols, from the world of language and imaging.
[CHR 95, p.122]

In this case, the map embodies the graphic origin of
writing.