Playful Mapping Collective (2016). Playful Mapping in the Digital Age. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
From Mah-Jong, to the introduction of Prussian war-games, through to
the emergence of location-based play: maps and play share a long and
diverse history. This monograph shows how mapping and playing unfold
in the digital age, when the relations between these apparently separate
tropes are increasingly woven together. Fluid networks of interaction
have encouraged a proliferation of hybrid forms of mapping and playing
and a rich plethora of contemporary case-studies, ranging from fieldwork,
golf, activism and automotive navigation, to pervasive and desktop-based
games evidences this trend. Examining these cases shows how mapping
and playing can form productive synergies, but also encourages new ways
of being, knowing and shaping our everyday lives. The chapters in this
book explore how play can be a more than just an object or practice, and
instead focus on its potential as a method for understanding maps and
spatiality. They show how playing and mapping can be liberating,
dangerous, subversive and performative.