The Hereford World Map

SAYONARA DIORAMA

ACTING OUT THE WORLD AS A STAGE IN

MEDIEVAL CARTOGRAPHY AND CYBERSPACE

by Adrianne Wortzel

from “Hereford World Map: Medieval World Maps and their Context “(British Library – British Library Studies in the History of the Book), 2006

Sayonara Diorama was a multiple-site, electronic-media performance production, written and produced by the author, featuring a repertory company of robots and human actors. It also included remote participating performers via the Internet from Finland, Great Britain, Germany, and several locations in the United States, creating a performance that all but spanned the globe. I

DIORAMA – OR DRAMA – IN CYBERSPACE

The question of whether the medieval cartographer was shaping an external world space, or an interior mind space -or both -as a paradigm of ideological navigation can also be applied to new media where myth and imagination playa large part in delineating and shaping space. Developing internet technologies afford a new area of territorial mapping in the space of telecommunications. In mapping that world I believe that we should look to maps such as the Hereford map for the kind of freedom of movement between didactic, spiritual, philosophical, and artistic concerns.

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