Lock (2010)

Core argument

• All representations are contested as they combine material reality and subjective interpretation

• The likes of GIS struggles to represent the inhabited space and the challenge for the humanities is how to move along this spectrum

Observation vs in-habitation

• Observation: Objective, Cartesian, GIS based, top-down e.g traditional maps

• In-habitation: Phenomenological, lived experience, people embedded in the landscape - maps struggle to represent this

Maps as culturally bias

• Maps reflect particular world views

• The Parish Mapping Project illustrates this: community-drawn maps based on "local distinctiveness" capture what matters to inhabitants, not what appears on official maps.

GIS attempts to improve maps

• Visibility and movement modelling represent an attempt to position individuals within landscapes rather than viewing them from above

• However this remains dependant on DEM resolution

Role of VR

• Lock stresses the value of Virtual reality (VR) in phenomenology and has been claimed to dissolve the subject/object divide

• However it relies on a detached gaze as the relationship between body and material world is far more complex than perception and cognition alone

Humanist Turn

• Spatial technologies are being absorbed into humanities approaches, meaning interpretation—not objectivity—remains central.

• Thus lock argues for a shift towards place based representations (on the inhabitation end)