Pad (Jun 2023)
Future Heritages. Digital as New Doc-Humanity and In-Tangible Materiality
Abstract
In this second issue devoted to memory and its relationship with the digital, we have chosen the image of an object, a Micronesian navigation chart.2 It originates within a tradition of implicit and empirical knowledge of a territory made experiential and handed down through an actual artefact. Unlike an ancient portulanus (pilot book), the map is physical and tactile and does not realistically reproduce or represent the morphology of the territory but rather a model of it. However, like Western nautical cartographies, this orientation tool embeds different levels of knowledge of a territory, or rather, of a context within which it is necessary to orient oneself in order to interact. Oriented thanks to the stellar compass, they include quantitative and qualitative information on ocean currents, flows, winds and "betia" or time-varying environment-based seamarks.
