This article was taken from the July 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Maps are a bridge "between art, history and technology," claims Hans-Ulrich Obrist, codirector of exhibitions and programmes at the Serpentine Gallery in London. For his new book, *Mapping it Out:
An Alternative Atlas of Contemporary Cartographies*, Obrist gathered a diverse group of artists, scientists, designers, architects and novelists including Craig Venter, Tim Berners-Lee and Damien Hirst and asked them to draw a modern map reflecting their work. The 135 resulting visuals include social networks of obese people, the world wide web and an artist's route home. "Most of them surprised me," says Obrist. "There is a range in scale, from microscopic particles to planetary maps. There is also a mix of very personal ones like Damien Hirst's, and those that plot out an entire body of research, like Craig Venter's."
Obrist's obsession with cartography began when he was introduced to Italian artist Alighiero Boetti, who made embroidered maps of the planet. Since then, he has run a series of "marathons" at the Serpentine Gallery with figures such as artist Ólafur Eliasson.
Next, he plans to publish a book of crowdsourced handwriting based on his current project, for which he is posting a sentence handwritten by an artist, architect or scientist on Instagram every day. "So many teenagers don't handwrite at all," he says. "Like maps, this too has been part of human history, and has evolved with technology."
Mapping it Out (Thames and Hudson) is published on June 16
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
