This earthbound constellation

This earthbound constellation.

Maps have POTENCY; may yield a wealth of knowledge past imagining if properly divined.

Encoded in this city's stones are symbols thunderous enough to rouse the sleeping Gods submerged beneath the sea-bed of dreams

Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, From Hell, Ch4, 19. Our own earthbound constellations.

And more on maps: new books; an exhibition: Paper Cities: Topography and Imagination in Urban Europe c1490–1780; Greenwood's 1827 map of London (probably quite useful to have at hand when reading From Hell); Ancient World Mapping Center; An old exhibition: Robert Smithson's Mapping Dislocations (and a small re-mapping).

Smithson's use of topographic maps from that project led him to develop a small but focused body of works based on his notions of mapping as fictive sites that pre-figured his sculptures called nonsites.

In 1970, Smithson was interviewed by Paul Cummings and stated, "The nonsite exists as a kind of deep three dimensional abstract map that points to a specific site on the surface of the earth. And that's designated by a kind of mapping procedure… these places are not destinations; they kind of [are] backwaters or fringe areas".

[Mostly via Here Be Dragons and Muxway]