Having been fascinated by maps most of my life I guess it was inevitable that I would explore digital map creation. Undertaking an introduction course to GIS I quickly discovered the potential of the technology as an artistic medium. With only the absolute basics at my disposal (GIS takes years of study to master) I started to explore the daunting software with a creative fervor.

Importing images of my hand-drawn artist maps into ArcGIS 9 I convert them into virtual three dimensional environments. My hand-drawn maps are not geographically referenced and even though GIS allows you to geo-reference imported images I stayed faithful to my concept and left them floating in abstract space. Without this data the program creates a 3d projection of an image via its tone (white = 255, black = 0) for height and its pixel count for size. So essentially my contours and grids become features to be mapped, I could describe contours with contours. The mistakes I made and in some cases highlight on the analogue maps are now an integral part of the ‘landscape’. As I mentioned previously maps help create our reality as well as describe it. Here I am creating a virtual reality from maps, a reality that can then be mapped.

As well as converting my analogue maps into ArcGIS maps I also convert images of landscapes created with Terragen, a freeware (and surprisingly powerful) landscape generation and rendering program. The Terragen landscapes are created from my analogue maps in much the same way as the ArcGIS process. So I am at the end mapping a rendered virtual landscape created from a map.

One of the results of my maps lacking geographic referencing is that distance and thus time cease to exist in their interpretation. Even though a conventional map is a static representation of some aspect of the earths surface at a single point in time they still represent dynamic time. This is done through the fact they symbolize distances found in the real world and being physical creatures we equate distance with the time it takes to travel it. Lacking a recognizable scale my digital maps depict nothing but polygons, points and lines which were themselves created from forms, points and lines.

I earlier criticized the use of default colour settings in GIS application yet I have essentially used nothing but in the creation of my digital artist maps. Reasoning behind this is my not wanting to employ further subjectivity in their creation. The originals are manipulated endlessly to achieve desired results. I try to dissociate myself from the creation of the originals acting as a cartographer mapping a section of the Earth's surface. I feel not unlike a landscape photographer when it comes to capturing the final image.

Even a poorly designed map will convey at least some geographic information, my maps convey none. Do they still qualify for the label map or are they just map-like images? I leave that up to you. I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labour.

-Wander: An interactive journey through 50 digital artist maps. Only a few buttons each map are active, move the mouse off an active button to travel.

-ArcGIS 9 Tutorials: How to create artist maps with ArcGIS 9

-Image Gallery: A gallery of all outsourced images found on this site. All images are linked to their source