Sensory Cartographies: Multisensory Mapping as a Tool for Understanding Urban Spaces

This paper introduces a methodological approach to interpreting urban distinctiveness through multi-sensory experiences, addressing the challenges in an era of increasing placelessness and global homogenisation. Our study investigates how distinct sensory experiences give rise to place-specific networks that can inform the process of reimagining urban spaces. The methodology used bridges Kevin Lynch’s city elements and Wajiro Kon’s concept of “modernology” through sensory understanding, while expanding beyond their reliance on visual perception by incorporating other senses. A case study workshop was held in the Yanesen area of Tokyo, Japan, with five groups, one for each of the five senses. Participants explored across the urban space, all the while mapping the routes they took and the spots where they had sensory experiences. This methodology allowed for a multiplicity of realities by shaping personal internal representations of the city through multisensory experiences and the fostering of a sense of place. The drawn maps demonstrated how Yanesen can become an assemblage of individual sensory perceptions. By perceiving the otherwise placeless city as a tapestry of multisensory experiences, users of our methodology can contribute to creating a shared but heterogenous urban image, facilitating more nuanced interpretations of urban space.
Keywords: Multisensory Mapping, Sensory Experience, Urban Interpretation, Sense of Place, Yanesen (Tokyo)

Camille Robert-Boeuf √ (PAScape Research Centre, Vilnius University, Lithuania)

Sensory Mapping: A New Methodology in Geography

The paper’s aim is to show the methodological and epistemological challenges associated with a novel approach to analysis and dissemination of results in the field of geography: sensory mapping. The author will provide a reflective examination of her methodology for understanding sensory relations (bodily, sensory and emotional experiences) with spatial environments.
The paper will illustrate the impact of integrating sensory experiences into geographical studies to improve the understanding of sensory spatiality. Based on her case studies on sensory relationships with the land, the author will argue that the geography of the senses necessitates a mixed-methods approach, integrating quantitative, qualitative, and sensory data. This exploration of sensory relationships to space has prompted the author, in collaboration with a research engineer, to develop a new sensory mapping technique. This innovative method facilitates the combination of spatial data (such as land use and GIS data), visual data (including photographs), and audio data (such as sound recordings) into a unified mapping framework. The paper will emphasize the potential for data interoperability that this method provides, as well as its significance for scientific communication. The interactive nature of this sensory map enables the cross-representation of geographical and sensory data, making it accessible to both academic audiences and the general public.
Keywords: senses ; mapping ; methodology ; geography ; environment

Rennie Tang (California State Polytechnic University Pomona, USA)

Mapping Sensory Experiences in the Landscape through Notational Drawing

Mapping is a visual practice that confronts the physical and material world through modes of graphic representation that tend to obscure the invisible, sentient space of sound, smell, taste, touch and movement. The obliteration of these sensory narratives within mapping practices deceives us into thinking that we live in a world of objects with names rather than spaces of flux and contingency. Through abstract gradients of lines, dots and marks, notational drawing stimulates a “landscape imaginary” and highlights the necessity of depicting the “unseen and often immaterial fields, forces, and flows” (Mostafavi et al, 2016). This research explores notational drawing as a mapping technique that captures the variability of the sensory world and enacts anthropologist Tim Ingold’s theory of lines in which physical objects or beings are subdued in favor of the lines which flow from them- not birds but their chirping sounds, not streets but the movement of vehicles, not flowers but their fragrance (Ingold, 2016). Questioning the limitations of symbols and icons in conveying the nuanced shifts and temporalities that shape landscape experience, this research is supported by experimental mappings by landscape architecture students that seek to reconnect the map maker to the sensorial aspects of landscape.
Keywords: mapping, notation, invisible, lines, abstraction