1.
Poetics of cartography means exactly what it sounds like, the "poetry" generated by the art of cartography. Poetry is of course, a hard term to define, but mostly involves using words, rhyme, and lyrical construction to create works of art, emotion, and meaning. Cartography, in the same way, employs visual data to create meaning and display information. Much like poetry, where there are metaphors and analogies, data maps define representations of real world icons by use of metaphorical imagery. Perhaps danger is indicated by a large exclamation point, or "no" is shown as the common crossed through circle. These metaphors are common iconography within data.
Also included in the "poetry" of cartography is that of rhythm and tempo. Mapping data, much like poetry, has a rhythm and a pattern that is often key to their construction. One example of this from "act one" is the mapping of potholes within New York City. This was represented by triangles which represented how severe the problem was in which areas. These triangles formed a pattern, a sense of meaning within the data, much like words form the same in poetry. Together with the metaphors employed to make them easier to comprehend, cartography and data mapping have more in common with poetry than one might originally think.
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2.
Besides the obvious differences in their methods of mapping and what they are mapping, Denis Wood and Nancy Updike also differ in a few major ways. They differ in reasoning and passion. Denis, who seems incredibly invested in his neighborhood, seems to do his extravagant mapping out of passion. Nancy, however, works for a specific company, who is developing the smell mapping from a financial and research standpoint.

The neighborhood mapping that Denis has undertook has occurred over the past several years. He has mapped everything from streetlights to which houses place pumpkins outside their homes. While at first insignificant, he draws several conclusions based on the data in terms of social participation. Those lacking pumpkins, for example, were the members of the community with the smaller homes, and the ones mentioned less in the weekly newsletter. He has done this not to find out annoying habits about his neighbors however, but to drive everyone together as a community. Further questions could be asked based on this data: Why is there this separation between members of the community? Why do the richer members get mentioned more often in the community? How can they draw these members together as a whole? Denis has a strong tie to his community, as so has a very social and passionate reasoning behind his work.

Nancy Updike, on the other hand, holds a different relationship to mapping. As part of a company who's job is to develop this new "smell" technology, there is a natural scientific approach driving the mapping. The smells the machine detects could be used to test for poisons, toxins, and so on. Additionally, there are obvious financial benefits from the technology. Using perfume in the example, a perfume company may actually pay for technology to be modified to determine what smell would be considered most attractive. While there are several applications of the technology, Nancy seems most interested in just developing it in any way possible. A scientific mind, it is a mostly untouched technology within the world. As a pioneer, Nancy's relationship to mapping is very much one of discovery. This doesn't mean she doesn't have the same passion as Denis, but she differs in her overall aims.

1. When Denis Wood uses the term poetics of cartography and I believe that he meant that both cartography and poetics are a art form. The words that poet composes are used to describe the world around them and the emotions they feel brought on by the five senses. Wood's maps do much of the same thing by describing his neighborhood both visually and emotionally. The images that Denis takes can be compared to the words that poets write and how they make people feel.

2. Two of the mappers that can be contrasted are Denis Wood and Nancy Updike. First, Mr. Wood does all of mapping for his own use and he does so by taking his own images. Nancy however, is doing all of here research for a company. Second, Denis does his maps through the use of taking images while Nancy's electronic nose uses complex sensors and circuit boards. Lastly, the application of both types of data are completely different. The maps of the neighborhood only benefit that specific neighborhood. The electronic nose can be used to sniff out land mines or narcotics and it can be used for medical diagnosis.

1. The term poetics of cartography was described by Denis is part one. I think he used this term to make a parallelism with the different maps that he was describing. Denis did not map the usual items that most people would map. Instead, he mapped the nontraditional items like pumpkins on people’s porches; telephone, cable, and electric wires in the city; and every traffic sign in the city. Each map that Denis created only focused on one particular item. These maps that he produced all had a different meaning of why he produced them. In poetry, people write in a different fashion and can express themselves in a unique way. Similarly, Denis was expressing his visions and thoughts through a unique way by using maps.

2. Denis Wood, in Act one, used sight to map, and Toby Lester, in Act two, used hearing to map. With Denis’s maps, he focused on one particular item in each map that he saw was important. Toby listened to the different sounds (background noises) that machines made. He took each individual sound, figured out the pitch, and then composed the chord. After Toby knew the chord, he could figure out if that chord was a “happy” or a “sad/somber” sounding chord. He could use this to determine how people might be feeling or what type of mood they had when they listened to those pitches on a daily basis. Denis used the pumpkin map to show pictorially who had been mentioned in the city’s newspaper, and the location that they lived. These people that were mentioned were the wealthy people in the city. Toby uses his maps to focus more on the individual needs, while Denis used his maps to focus on the city’s needs.

When Denis Wood describes "a search that [he has] for poetics of cartography," he is talking about more of the artistic side of map making. As Wood and the host, Glass, discuss on air, map making is typically undertaken in order to accomplish a specific purpose. For example, people trying to understand how to drive to a specific location require a map of the roads leading in that direction. Wood, however, maps not for a specific purpose, but more out of curiosity. His quest for knowledge, not his need for specific information, drive him to create artistic maps of the "collective patterns" of "what it is to live in the neighborhood." This, in addition to mapping what people normally consider un-mappable, is what Denis Wood believes to be the "poetics of cartography."

Toby Lester maps the sounds of the world. He pays attention to the everyday things we would normally not notice, from the sound of an air conditioner running to a car idling. His hyper-awareness allowed him to explore the fundamental theories of music, and to attempt to understand why humans consider sounds to be sad or happy. He seeks to find connections between the sounds we experience and the state of our lives. In contrast, Denis Wood pays attention to the obvious, visible elements of the world we live in. Unlike some of the background noises, we do tend to notice Wood's mapping items, but may not seek to find the connections between them. While Lester's sound mapping attempts to explain human emotions and the effects sounds have on them, Wood's maps work the opposite direction, looking at what humans have created, such as jack-o-lanterns or street signs, and using them to explain why people have made such things.

By poetics of cartography, Denis Wood means the displaying of art through the making of maps. Poetics is making an art. His goal is to display a poetic image through a map. He wants the map to speak to the reader. He described how a map doesn't have to be ordinary, how any map can show something different. He shows that just like poetry, there is not one and only one acceptable type of map. He shows one of the telephone lines in the town (on webpage), and it looks like a tree. People can interpret this map any way, kind of how someone would look at a poem and analyze it. Maps are meant for interpretation.

The two that I am comparing are Denis Wood and Toby Lester, because they are the most different. Denis is mapping something that is actually there, something that you could see. Obviously, Toby is mapping sound which is something that is actually happening, but he is mapping it into how you feel. Denis is showing what each thing looks like, and really uncovering what something would look like when in a different context. Toby is showing people how a persons mood could change because of their environment. The big difference is that Denis is showing the environment so people can observe it while Toby is showing the environment so people could observe themselves.

1. In act one Dennis Wood talks about the poetics of cartography. The poetics of cartography are simply the ways that Dennis goes about creating his maps. Poetics by definition is a study of poetry, or the act of poetic composition. Therefore the poetics of cartography would equate to the study of the world around him, and the composition of the maps that Dennis creates. Within act one Dennis talks about his maps and how the processes of creating his maps sort of engulfs him. He tells of how the maps of his neighborhood, which he has been working on for several years, can be used to draw connections between the residents and their prosperity and way of life. For example, the map of the pumpkin faces, which shows where all of the pumpkins are within his neighborhood can then be overlay by the map of recognition within the neighborhood newsletter and the connection can be made that those with more pumpkins are mentioned more often in the newsletter. Those mentioned in the news letter are generally the ones with the bigger homes, and are the more prominent members within the community. All of this, according to Dennis, helps one understand the neighborhood at a level far deeper then one could ascertain simply by looking over a map of the streets, he is capturing the essence of the neighborhood.

2. Denis Wood and Toby Lester are both mappers, but they operate on different levels. While they are both dedicated to mapping the world around them, Dennis maps what he see's and Toby maps what he hears. Dennis walks around his neighborhood mapping tree shadows, street light circles, pumpkin faces, street signs and many more visual aspects of his daily life. He puts all of this information down on paper to be later reviewed and studied. He uses these maps to get a better understanding of his neighborhood, and to capture the personality of his neighborhood.

Toby Lester maps the sounds that he is constantly being surrounded by. He uses his musical background to determine the notes and keys of the persistent droning that the appliances in his world create. He states that this past hundred years or so is unique in that we are the first human's to be exposed to noises on a highly consistent level, where we are always being serenaded by the low droning of appliances, electronics and machinery. This is in contrast of what Dennis does in that Toby is mapping strictly what he hears, and it's implications on our emotional and mental state. He believes that when the low droning harmonizes to create notes that are of a sad nature, this could affect our behavior and even our level of satisfaction with life. Dennis maps what he sees within his neighborhood so that he may come to a better understanding of how the world closest to him functions. Both men map so that they may have a more complete idea of the world around them, just in highly different ways.

1. In saying that Denis Wood is a cartography enthusiast one would be greatly understating his obsession for the art of map making. During his interview he uses the phrase "poetics of cartography" to describe the connection between map making and the art of poetry. He sees the entire world as a potentially mapped space, stating that the spatial relationships between information can be drawn out to relay a connection. For instance his drawings of pumpkins on porches does not use a visual representation of streets to explain where the gourds are located in his neighborhood. In doing so, much like poetry, Wood is leaving the visual connection up to the imagination of the viewer. Instead of arranging words in a poetically appealing manor he utilizes graphic representations. In the same way that words and phrases interact with the reader of a poem, the graphic representation creates a natural interaction with the viewer of the map.

2. It is interesting to compare the first two acts in how they map the world around them. In act one, Denis Wood maps the physical characteristics of his neighborhood. Act two introduces us to Toby Lester who is more interested in the audiological data that surrounds us on a daily basis. Similarly each of these modern cartographers view the world around them uniquely. They each take simple elements of daily life (sound, electricity) and reconstruct them in a way rarely (or never) done before. While Wood is more interested in visual representations, Lester's data set represented better in an audio format. Lester also looks to combine the elements (ambient noise) to create a musical incarnation, thus indicating a relation. Wood looks to break down elements and map them separately to see the relation.

1. In act one Denis wood uses the term poetics of cartography to describe the artistic nature of his maps. While writing can be used to convey purpose, poems are a form of writing in which there is no outright purpose and in which thoughts, emotions, and feelings flow freely in whatever manner desired. Likewise, Denis' maps have no apparant purpose and are free from the bounds of maps designed to deliver useful data. While interesting to look at, the pumpkin map Dennis created really can't be used for anything practical. Still, the map is pleasing to look at and qualifies as an entirely valid work. It is for this reason that he deems it the "poetics of cartography", as the maps are uniquely creative forms of expression designed to appeal to the innermost feelings of mankind.

2. The two mappers which I found most different were Dennis Wood and Deb Monroe. While Dennis plots his maps down on paper for other people, Deb's maps are plotted for herself in her brain by her fingers alone. Though highly unlikely, Deb's maps could reveal hazardous medical conditions, while Dennis' have very little practical purpose. From their expressions it is clear Dennis views his maps as beautiful while Deb sees them as ugly and problematic. The degree of accuracy is also quite different; while Dennis creates maps from actual collected data, Deb forms her maps through a mixture of fear, stress, and anxiousness that distorts whether the data is actually there or is merely precieved. Finally, Dennis mentioned that he may eventually put his maps in a novel, meaning he intends to share his maps. It is highly doubtful Deb intends to share her maps with others as willingly as Dennis.

Poetic is simply having and imaginative or sensitively emotional style of expression and cartography is the science of or practice of drawing maps. When placing these two definitions together, Poetics of cartography simply put is the imaginative and emotional expression through map making. Denis Wood is a perfect example of a person that was able to take this definition and put it in the next level. Denis, through is art of cartography, was able to take the ordinary, everyday things that people saw but never really thought about and make them into something that people admired and saw in a different light. For example: one of his creations was a map of how the light falls through the trees' leaves and hits the ground as well as other creations like power-lines that lie under the ground. These two examples linked visual imagery with natural works of unclaimed art. This act now becomes more of a poetic art piece, but yet because of the medium, context, and arrangement it truly means something much deeper than a just a poem or just a map.
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Jonathan Gold maps by taste. He made himself every restaurant and eatery on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, whereas Denis Wood maps by the abnormal sights that he found in his neighborhood. Both artists thought outside the normal box by choosing a sense that is not normally associated with cartography. Both express feelings and expressions through their works. Both use the traditional map idea to express areas so that others can follow and have a technical understanding of what was seen. The artists have several differences as well. For Jonathan Gold he focused solely on the already created. He visited restaurants, eateries, and food stands, etc. Where as Denis Wood focused on the unconventional or the uncreated. He focused on Neighborhood sights like pumpkins on porches or traffic lights. There was no pattern to his work, it just simply flowed. Gold seem to have more of a pattern or an arrangement. The creations were based on different mediums such as taste and sight. Audience would have been different for both for the same reasons. The context of their art had lots of room for interpretation.