Terra Incognita

I just went to see the Map exhibition at the British Library, a look at how maps have been influenced by, and have influenced themselves art, politics, and the way we look at space (or so says all the blurb).

A bit like studying architecture, everything was western-centric... I think there was only one Chinese map, painted on silk as a perspective - it looked like a piste map from a ski resort. There were a few birds-eye view maps, done in incredible detail, of medieval guild towns, but they end up looking a bit like a cartoon, a Where's-Wally of intricate detail. Almost all the others were of top-down 2-dimensional plan views, a fairly static way of looking at the world since the 1300's Mappa Mundi. Some of them were drawn "upside down" as South used to be the primary direction indicated by compasses, an inversion which gives you a different perspective on the world but is pretty superficial.

And I'm flying to Canada on Tuesday week... into Vancouver and then working my way north from Victoria into the maze of islands in the straits between the Vancouver Island and the mainland. East Thurlow Island doesn't appear on any of the maps in the Exhibition today, and neither does Canada in almost any of them. They appear as 'Terra Incognita', there be dragons, and who knows what's out there?