Nina Katchadourian : World Map

I made this map in college in response to an assignment, and it marks the beginning of my work with maps. Using a blade, I took apart a paper map, moving pieces over to a large piece of paper which I watercolored the same blue as the ocean in the original map. Gradually, the world was reconfigured. I often reconstructed words using presstype in places where the names of countries had gotten truncated. There were switches based on historical or geopological factors (Western Europe inserted into West Africa); others were based on formal correspondences or quirks of the map itself. Australia and Alaska had the same green border color, for example, and fit perfectly together due to the distortion of scale that occurs towards the poles.

Resource : http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/maps/worldmap.php

Nina Katchadourian : Hand-held Subway

Dissected paper map of the New York subway system. This was made at the same time as I was collecting a lot of loose audio tape found on the streets of New York (see Songs of the Islands) and this image renders the subway network into something that looks like just another piece of tangled trash on the ground.

 

Resource : http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/maps/handheldsubway.php

Nina Katchadourian : Songs of the Islands: Concrete Music from New York

Songs of the Islands was made in New York City in 1996 when I noticed the quantity of discarded, loose audio cassette tape tangled in gutters, subway grills and traffic islands, and decided to start collecting it. The collection took several months and yielded tape fragments with all sorts of music, including rap, Vietnamese pop music, heavy metal, reggae, traditional Indian music and salsa. There were also non-musical discoveries, such as an episode of “All in the Family” recorded ambiently in a room with a bird chirping, and outtakes from a radio journalist’s interview with a psychic. In their stylistic variety and linguistic diversity, these soundtracks describe the astounding mix of people living in New York.

 

Resource : http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/misc/islands.php