6 10 88 Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 2: Land Masses Description An account of the resource This layer features colored depictions of the continents included in the map. I chose this layer to focus on the Japanese perspective of the globe, which includes very basic depictions of the continents. I noticed nearly every land mass, including even the smallest islands, has a label in Japanese. I hypothesized that perhaps this is connected to the fact that Japan itself is an island, located near even smaller islands and thus the mapmaker was accustomed to paying close attention to even the smallest of lands. The only topographical depictions included are mountains, what appears to be a small body of water, and an illustration I interpret to be Mount Fuji. The ocean is left uncolored, while all the land is filled in. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Esther Tracing Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Map layer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 1: Cultural Depictions Description An account of the resource This layer includes the 12 illustrations of people from different cultures in the map. The images are grouped by region and labeled with Japanese characters. I believe these depictions represent the desire of the mapmaker to make sense of the differing cultures that populate the globe. This map is attributed to the year 1850, a period during which Japan was beginning to make contact with the rest of the world. The different characterizations of cultures in the images, ranging from sophisticated to combat-focused, reflect the mapmaker's general understanding of the different ethnicities depicted. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Esther Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 3: Waterways Description An account of the resource Perhaps the central feature of the map are the bodies of water that run through the territory of Berlin, namely the river Spree and several smaller tributaries. The waterways are emphasized on the map with a separate color (blue) and with curved lines, which are reproduced on this layer. The direction of the river flow is also marked on the map with an arrow, suggesting that this information was important to visitors of 18th-century Berlin. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olga Kuzmina Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 2: Walls Description An account of the resource One of the things that stood out most immediately to me about this map—again, both visually and interpretively—was the abundance of fortifications and walls of different types on display. Visually, the darkly rendered lines of the walls give them a boldness that overshadows other kinds of information on the map. I do not believe this map has a military or even strongly political purpose (because of its decorative qualities and emphasis on points of interest in the lower etching) but the choice to meticulously and darkly render so many different kinds of walls in the city to me sends a clear message about Berlin's robust infrastructure and defense. The kinds of walls included are so intricate and varied: countryside fences, imposing arched perimeter walls, fences demarcating property boundaries, city walls dividing streets and bridges, and of course the impressive intricacies of the inner star-shaped fortifications. What are these walls telling us? Is Berlin an unwelcoming place? Again, I don't think so. Instead, this seems to be a map of a city proud of its well-designed fortifications and distinctly organized suburbs. To reflect all of this, I traced the map's walls with a thick brush pen, both to emulate the look of the dark walls on the map and also to emphasize the way in which those walls seem to be a bold and intentionally abundant feature. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Emma Talkoff Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 2: Fences and Fortifications Description An account of the resource This layer depicts the fortifications that mark the boundaries of the territory of Berlin, and which focus the viewer's attention on the center of the map. The northern boundary of the city appears to be a walled fortification, which gives way to a more primitive (perhaps wooden) fenced boundary on the southern side. The map depicts the materials from which the fortifications were made, and the layer seeks to reproduce this information. In the center of the map is another fortification that surrounds the heart of the city on what appears to be a man-made island in the center of the river Spree. While the map features numerous smaller fences that depict boundaries between private territories, I chose in this layer to isolate the main boundaries of the city as a distinct feature of the map that depicts these boundaries as structures in their own right. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olga Kuzmina Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 1: Color Description An account of the resource Because my map is in German, there is much about it that I still don't understand. That's frustrating on some level, but it has also allowed me to employ the map-studying technique of ignoring text to focus on the visual components of the map and the ways in which they work together. One of the most striking such elements are the blocks of pale color used to subdivide the city. For my first layer, I wanted to capture these pastel zones and think about how they might be interacting with the rest of the map. Carrying this out made me more aware of several things: the way the river has been mastered to flow around and through the central city's defense walls, the abundance of zoned "green space" in the suburbs of the city (which mysteriously does not encompass all tree-heavy areas, signifying some distinction between different kinds of park areas), and the ongoing mystery of the pink sections. From a purely visual perspective, these pale complimentary colors are part of what makes this map so pleasing to me. From an information perspective, they are a bold and effective way of dividing space—but I still don't fully understand their implications. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Emma Talkoff Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 3: Continent Outlines Description An account of the resource Perhaps the most obvious medium for the portrayal of European domination is the inclusion or exclusion of continents on Vischer’s map. Europe appears at the northernmost point as the most complex in outline due to the cartographer’s Dutch background. Africa appears particularly large in scale, even surpassing the size of Asia, perhaps due to its conceptualization in European global imaginary as a as site for exploitation of natural resources and the enslavement of people via the transatlantic slave trade. South America is similarly large in scale, perhaps due to the Dutch involvement in Brazil, Chile, and the Guyanas beginning in the early 1600’s. Present day Australia not only appears as the southernmost land in the right spheroid but also appears mostly unexplored. The Dutch colonization of New Holland (present day Australia) involved mapping the western and northern coast of the land in the mid-1600’s, but at the time of Vischer’s map the eastern and southern coasts were, to his knowledge, nonexistent. North America appears relatively small in size, with California existing as its own land mass. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Reade Rossman Tracing Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data map layer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 2: North & South Poles Description An account of the resource The North and South Poles, while taking up less space on the map, prove just as integral to the arguments of the map as the East-West Hemisphere split. They are depicted via azimuthal projections in which the distance from a center point is recorded while distorting size. More specifically, Vischer applies gnomonic map projection in which circles are depicted as straight lines. The fact that both the poles are relatively uninhabited allows Vischer to apply this method without worrying too much about the effect of such distortion. Novissima totius terrarum orbis tabula follows ptolemaic map projection in that it depicts two “frigid zones” however the map is absent of any conception of a southern land mass like Antarctica. The North Pole includes depictions of modern day Northern European countries and Russia. The depiction of the poles bolster the North-South bias of the map, portraying the North as the height of exploration and expansion and the south as vast and empty. As Professor Nicole De Armendi in Map as Political Agent, projections such as that included in Vischer’s map, “Antarctica is frequently eliminated and the equator is located much lower than midway on the grid, enhancing the North’s dominant position.” While the equator constitutes another layer of the map, the portrayal of the poles serves to fortify a notion of European domination. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Reade Rossman Tracing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 1: Field Terrain Description An account of the resource This layer depicts the fields on the outskirts of the territory of Berlin. They are distinct from the enclosed properties in and around the city, and are set off with horizontal lines. This field terrain is the most peripheral area depicted on the map of Berlin before the map turns to negative space, which suggests the field terrain was an important marker of the outer bounds of the city. I initially hesitated to isolate the field terrain from other types of terrain depicted on the map (for example, the map contains territories with gardens or other enclosed plots of land, populated with tiny trees), because terrain would technically belong in single layer. In the end, however, the field terrain stood out to me because its lack of definitive enclosure (unlike the contained plots of land), and its distinct color and shading. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Olga Kuzmina Tracing Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data map layer Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Layer 1: Spheres Description An account of the resource Perhaps the most intrinsic element of a map are the shapes which guide and inform the reader’s perspective. The art of transforming a three dimensional land mass into a two dimensional piece of paper is reliant on orienting the reader’s line of sight. Vischer’s Novissima totius terrarum orbis tabula relies on four spheroids with two depicting the East-West hemispheres that lie between a proposed meridian. The second set depict azimuthal projections of the North and South Poles where the Earth’s axis meets its surface–this means that the poles are mapped according to flat planes rather than the conic projections of the East-West Hemispheres. I chose not to include these projection lines, however, because of the symbolic nature of empty spheroids. Whereas layers of the map such as the continents, and land-water hemispheres inevitably depict the cartographer’s bias, spheroids are a simplistic and rather equalizing element of the map. They rid the map of the scale distortion that comes from projection lines as well as the colonial distortion that comes from continent/country inclusion. I believe the spheroids to be the map in its most raw form. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Reade Rossman