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Description:

Art, GIScience, and Geography

In this panel session, we aim at exploring the relationship between art, geographic information science, and geography, framing the discussion in the context of the spatial humanities. The term “spatial humanities” refer to the use of geographic information science and technologies, and especially GIS, in the field of the humanities, in the context of exploring large databases characterized by the presence of a geographic attribute, with a geographic question at the core of the research. The spatial humanities are part of the “digital humanities,” a term that refers to the use of digital technologies in the humanities—the fields of literature, English, history, art history, linguistics, classics, archeology, philosophy, and religion. Historians and archeologists have been among the first to engage in spatial humanities projects, often in collaboration with geographers and geographic information scientists. In addition to making contributions to the humanities, such collaborations have led to the development of Historical GIS, as well as contributed to the conversation around qualitative GIS, platial GIS (or the GIS of place), and Humanistic GIS. Less frequent have been the collaborations between art historians and geographic information scientists in spatial humanities projects; different is the case for the relationship between art and geography.

In a seminal paper, Harriet Hawkins (2011) discusses how the study of art works can contribute to the development of geographical themes and practices, especially art’s potential to contribute to the core concepts of space and landscape, and highlights two types of relationships between art and geography: ‘dialogues’, meaning the roles geographers may take as interpreters of art, and ‘doings,’ meaning the body of creative geographies created by the collaboration of artists and geographers, including geography and public art. More recently (2019), Hawkins see four key geographers engage with art: increased attention to contemporary rather than historical works; heightened consideration for a variety of artistic media beyond painting, including everything from performance art to installation and sculpture; an extension of themes beyond landscape to include the body, geopolitics, or home; a shift in modes of engagement that sees geographers working collaboratively as curators and artists.

Hawkins’s gaze is that of a cultural geographer and indeed it is from this perspective that the bulk of academic research can be found, as witnessed for example by the dozen or so articles on the subject published in recent years in the AAG’s own GeoHumanities. Interest in transdisciplinary modalities of research is at the core of the spatial humanities, as already discussed, and it is at this intersection that we can find examples of research that is specifically about geographic information science and art. Most recently, Griffith (2022) using spatial autocorrelation as the organizing concept to study the clustering of colors in paintings from da Vinci, Monet, and Rembrandt paintings, demonstrating replicability. In an earlier article (2017), Mennis explores the relationship between geographic representation in GIS and in art, as illustrated by the vector and raster spatial data models used in GIS and their affinity with representational painting techniques employed by Seurat, Signac, Mondrian, and Diebenkorn.

Our session intends to present recent research at the intersection of art, GIScience, and geography in the context of the spatial humanities. True to the spatial and digital humanities tradition, the panelists include geographers, geographic information scientists, and an art historian.

References
Rosenberg, D. 2015. Against infographics. Art Journal (Winter 2015), 38-57.

Young, S., and P. Kelly. 2017. Macro or micro? A visual art exhibition challenging our perceptions of scale. GeoHumanities 3(1): 250-265.

Mennis, J. 2018. Geographic representation in GIS and art: Common threads as exemplified in
paintings by Seurat, Signac, Mondrian, and Diebenkorn. GeoHumanities 4: 178-195.

Giordano, A., S. Shaw, and D Sinton. 2000. Guest Editors' Introduction: The geospatial humanities: Transdisciplinary opportunities. International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 14(1-2): 1-5.

Griffith, D. A. 2022. Art, Geography/GIScience, and Mathematics: A surprising interface. Annals
of the American Association of Geographers 113(1). DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2022.2086101

Non-Presenting Participants