The Cistern is building a virtual research space that brings together a wide range of geographical books, atlases, land descriptions, and maps produced between the 15th and early 20th-centuries. Initially rare artifacts, these objects gradually became part of everyday life, reflecting the rise of territorialized states, intensifying militarization, and sweep capitalization of international economies.
This project gathers a team of research assistants and student programmers to investigate the history of modern mapping as it became part of everyday life from paper maps and pocket atlases to aerial photography, satellite imagery, drones, and GPS. It archives this historical process in a database of images and books on the geography of the Middle East, focusing initially on Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, English and French publications and cultural artifacts.
A research team laid the foundations of a searchable engine and experimented with a 3D research room prototype. The searchable database incorporates existing bibliographical repositories, reframing them to respond to the needs of current users across fields and disciplines. It reorients the history of science and technology by curating objects and instruments alongside people rather than great personalities and groundbreaking machines. The methodology raises questions of gender, authority, knowledge production, marginality, and transnationalism.
This tool is housed in a virtual space that has the basic architecture of a cistern, a calm underground space sustaining a bustling city. The pairing of academic research with a virtual research space aims to generate innovative thought-processes and research questions while at the same time offering a new kind of immersive environment that is conducive to attention (de)focusing, collaborative learning, and creative ignition.