PROCESSTASK 2A: DOCUMENTATION OF MAPPING PROCESS

Joy Li

02

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

The idea of delving into personal mapping was instigated by the discovery of a tangible record of heritage within my father's side of the family history. Following the Confucian genealogical traditions of mapping, this record initiates its mapping from the 17th generation of Li's within the province where 'Lotus flowers are plentiful'.

left: This copy of the family tree belonging to my Grandfather that was brought back to Australia by my father recently. The book records marriage, birth, offspring and notable positions held by individuals originating from the 17th generation of Li's. The earlier books are said to be most likely held in earlier collections and repositories located within their hometowns.

Culturally, the record follows a lineage traditional to Chinese patriarchal structures. Complex forms of organisation and rearrangement of individuals based on order and succession recall similar concepts within Western traditions.

On a personal level, my interest stems from the stories and queries my family origin from a position of cultural disassociation and its inherent barriers to accessing knowledge. In a way, it can be argued that this position emerges from a place of outward injustice and superficial jealousy (in that my brother's legacy will be able to continue whereas my role in this personal history will end abruptly).

In considering this impetus to establish agency, it perhaps speaks to our anxiety about mortality in the sense that we need to be able to locate ourself. Thus the wider interest in documenting our existing lives is to validate our present so that it becomes meaningful, concrete and fixed. Digital technologies have in a way allowed us to photograph, document and share our lives in much broader capacity than before.

This research process aims not to recreate what exists but rather lead a critical inquiry into how existing knowledge within familial relationships can be constructed and informed by experience to lead to a design response representative of my own truths.

Great Great Grandfather/mother(18th Generation)

Great Great Great Grandfather(17th Generation)

KEY

Great Grandfather/mother(19th Generation)

Grandfather, Grandmother20th Generation)

Father, Uncle and Mother(21st Generation)

My Brother and I(1st Generation)

03

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Design Probe:

Exploring different responses in an individuals understanding of their familial structures, I engaged in a participatory approach by generating a design probe sent via WeChat to my extended family. What resulted was a curated selection of personal maps that utilise different mapping methods and expressions to create their own truths. A general analysis imparted on these maps was necessary to inform my own relationships and methods to mapping. Time permitted, the participatory nature of this design method could have become an extensive project on its own. But for the context of this project, it serves as a tool for research and analysis.

left: For context, WeChat is a social media (instant messaging, commerce and payment services) application developed by Chinese Internet and Tel-co company Tencent. It one of the most widely used social media outlets in China with about 900 million users.

Within my extended Chinese family, we have a chat group in which we communicate via voice call or text messaging. In a sense, the nature of this technological system undermines the notion of the tyranny of distance in the shaping of my Australian identity.

04

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Bā Bā:My father’s family tree is a formal representation and record of his familial networks. Within the two iterations, he explores the visual language of tree-diagramming and adopts the methods of hierarchical structures to construct relationships, pedigree and sequentially based understandings.

left: (Top) My father’s first attempt at mapping his family network in a logical structure of a vertically top-down system accounts for the traditional Chinese writing discourse. Interestingly these maps seek to represent specific qualities and characteristics of its creator. In this map, the circular forms are used to enclose the male authorities highlighting the patriarchal nature of depiction, significant within the constructs of understanding lineage of Chinese traditions. What can thus be inferred is that my father can be viewed as a conservative, rational and orthodox in his representations of his own truths.

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

(Bottom) The second attempt was a spontaneous reflective creation in response to the tree map generated the previous day. In this visualisation, a change of perspective was evident in that the relational structures have been flipped into a horizontal configuration, as if a shift in understanding his family networks as a more complex system of relations which in his previous attempt may have failed to capture. As a side note, the members he didn't include yet knew were predominantly due to spatial limitations and their relevance to his physical immediacy.

¹/2

²/2

05

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Mā Mā: In my mother’s attempts of strategic diagrammatising her family relations. The spread of thoughts and different usage of symbols and systems become consistent with the nature of her personality and idealism.

left: (Top) The first attempt proved futile as she expressed that she hadn't planned it before she put pen to paper. The disconnect in explaining what was required of her was strained at this initial stage, most likely due to difficulties in communication and verbal translation of intent.

(Middle) Again, using herself as the centre of her map was a process which resulted in her inability to fully express herself in relation to her connections. From a Western perspective, an individual may be presented as their autonomous selves. Whereas an Eastern understanding views an individual as part of a larger and more holistic reflections of self.

¹/3

²/3

³/3

(Bottom) Upon some reflection and different methods of creating and delineating associations, the map extensively presents and structures connections based on my mother's understanding of the roles within her family. Multiple symbologies suggest this, as the use of numbering, arrow forms as well as letters as short form keys add an extra layer of knowledge to those unacquainted or unversed in Chinese gender roles. The outwardly convoluted and encompassing nature of this process speaks to her perfectionism and willingness to be thorough in her depictions. On other thoughts, there is an interesting shift in orientation when read as if there was a particular motive aside from the impracticalities of space.

06

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

William:From a predominately Western mode of viewing, my brother’s interpretation highlights the tensions between the binary understandings of lineage and genealogy between two cultures.

above: Like myself, my brother has a seemingly acculturated view of representation and presentation of his family tree. Taking from our understanding of logical associations relating to historical Eurocentric visualisations, we subscribe to their notions of descent as a form of legitimacy and heraldry (fig. 1). Yet where the binaries of tensions reveal themselves are through the remains of his Chinese maternal and paternal modes of naming. In context, the complexities of kinship demands a certain inherited respect, where this forgotten terminology is an erosion of culture and memory.

left: A Gutun Owain Manuscript (fl. 1450-98) , A Medieval Geneology traced from Adam and Eve. This part of the manuscript is an incomplete genealogical text. It begins by listing the biblical lineages and then follows the history of the descendants of Brutus and the finally lists the kings of Britain. (Source: National Library of Wales)

note: To a semi-native speaker, it is actually very comical to make out my brother's phonetic translations of the Chinese language. And how the incorrectness in his adopting an existing system of romanised spelling of transliterating Chinese (Pin Yin) highlights perfectly the widening disconnect that the successive generation will face in rekindling their relationship with their forebearers.

07

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Wài Pó:The written and aural map written by my grandmother (mother's side) speaks as a retrospective inquiry into her own recounts of the key moments during her life.

left: (Top) The nature of writing as a form of mapping is an often overlooked method within a traditionally visually prescribed discourse. In this act, my grandmother organises her thoughts in a manner which allows them to flow clearly and logically. This aural form of communication recalls the traditions within Aboriginal culture of tranferring knowledge and memory through the act of story telling, song, and other ceremonial practices.

(Bottom) To dissect this linguistic approach, my mother assisted in translating to the best of her ability the core idea of my Grandmother's words. As a map being authored from a singular perspective, a central theme emerges as well as related connective branches link events, places and outcomes. From a subjective reading, her intention was to present to her grand daughter an intimate recount of her story.

08

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Dà Yí: Rooted in a non-secular and Christian way of life, my Aunt's (Mother's eldest sister) religious disposition informs her understanding of the symbolic associations between her family to 'the giving tree' and 'the tree of life'.

left: (Top) Observing the map as an ideological embodiment of a living and growing organism, my Aunt's interpretation of her family is as that of her relationship with creation itself. I glean from the substantial roots where she firmly situates her own grandparents as the originating source that grounds her present existence. The framing of lines as a visual and graphic features creates the formal associations of the branches as being the new source of fruit bearers. To an extent, whilst my Aunt has no children of her own, she opens up the possibilities for us to fill the spaces in between her own life. As a larger interpretation, it could be perhaps understood for the reading of a tree as a source of eternal life.

(Bottom Left) The Jesse Tree from the Spinola Hours. Master of James IV of Scotland Flemish, Bruges and Ghent or Mechelen, 1510 - 1520. Source: Wikimedia Commons

(Bottom Right) Tree of Jesse illustration based on the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (12th century). Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Tree of Jesse is a diagram illustrating the ancestors of Christ, shown in a tree which rises from Jesse of Bethlehem, the father of King David and is the original use of the family tree as a schematic representation of a genealogy.

09

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Mèi Yí & Rose:My second Aunt (Mother's youngest sister) and my youngest cousin generated representational and artistic renderings as their means of communicating their relational proximities to their families.

left: (Top) Emerging from a creative background, my second Aunt, whilst perhaps taking aspects of Christian ideologies, retains a better understanding of representational and graphical qualities to communicate relationships and meaning. Unlike the other mapping techniques by family members, what is interesting is the utilisation of colour, size and relational positioning of forms to sort information.

(Bottom Left) My youngest cousin, of a greater fluency in the Western forms of education and visual systems, presents an interpretation of simultaneously mixed literal and figurative associations to her familial roles. Such that whilst being a literal tree with her family situated amongst its branches, an

understanding of authoratitive structure and hierarchy is evidenced in the purposeful positioning of different family members on the tiered levels. It is likely that the map stems from her contained sphere of relations within her own understanding of the concept of family and the immediate personal proximities that surrounds her.

(Bottom Right): Tree of Science from Ramon Llull, Arbol de la ciencia de el iluminado maestro Raymundo Lulio, 1663. Source: Hyperallergic

13th Century Spanish scholar Ramon Llull arranged 16 areas of science into a tree, an idea that endured so strongly that later Darwin would use the 'Tree of Life' to show evolutionary thinking.

10

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

The examination of these maps, does not seek to purvey the idea that all non-designers have the capacity to generate effective designs. But rather it goal to demonstrate that whilst an individual may not actively know design principles, they do however inherently posses universal understandings of graphical structures, supported by their understanding of their world, to allow them to perceive knowledge.

Whilst our tendencies to prioritise the understanding of technical functions of form, poetic expression and intuition, over reasoning and analytical thinking. Existing within an information design space, I believe that they should hold equal significance.

11

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

Exploring Place and Movement:

This was a brief experiment using Google My Maps to examine different ways of mapping genealogy through distance and place. I intended for this experiment to look at what these methods can tell us about the spatial movement of bodies and the stories that contextualise these movements. I took the birth and present locations of various members of family and mapped them accordingly. I embedded elements of their personal stories, passed down orally, to give meaning to these connections.

Explore map: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eYlw2I2LshAyB9HNt4NvDxdzLzo&usp=sharing

left: (Top) The mapping process involved looking at shifting the traditional understanding of hierarchical modes of viewing genealogy. In considering the nature of immigration, movement and positioning of bodies within a space presently so technologically networked that perhaps the physical distance and scale expressed on a traditional map can bring out nuances and gravitas to my relationship with my fore bearers.

(Bottom) Where the real value emerges was during the train-of-thought note taking of passed down memories in relation to specific individuals that make up the larger family story.

there were many aspects which could have benefited from a broader investigation and further plotting of information garnered through oral histories. (ie. If I mapped the entire journey within our immigration process to Australia) However, as this method follows a non-traditional form of genealogical mapping, whereby the temporal and relational qualities have been detached from this experience.

Yet existing limitations, posed by time restraints and the lack of knowledge in tracing the histories of every member within my extended family, reduces this to an experimentation to consider within the larger visual framework.

12

Ta

sk 2

: Ma

pp

ing

PART B: DESIGN OUTCOME

http://joyli.com.au/from-east-to-west.html