Diagram #19 (How to Draw a Penguin)

Even-Scale Map #2 (My Days on Earth)

Even-Scale Map #1 (Children in Oakland Under 18 Yrs)

Even-Scale Series (Notes)

Even-scale is a principle I’ve been developing for use in cartographic art pieces. It began in thoughts about how visual information is usually structured in maps, diagrams, graphs, and other instrumentalist visual arts. Customarily the presentation of any given source data is determined by the supposed legibility of that data to its imagined future “readers.” By contrast, in even-scale the objective is to establish an experiential and/or bodily connection between the mapmaker and the data. The assumption is that a new kind of legibility, directly emblematic of the phenomena, will continue to be perceptible, if only as a by-product.

In practice, the mapmaker tries to find some technique to directly experience the scale of people or quantities being represented. A physical mark made by the mapmaker might represent time, dollars, distance, people, or deaths. Other kinds of alignments are out there to be invented. The ideal is a one-to-one equivalence of some kind, but realistically any equivalence (10 to one, 100 to one) is a sufficient gesture towards even-scale.

Diagram #18 (Symbology of the Mosquito)

Diagram #17 (The Types of Movement)

Diagram #16 (The Minutes of Frank O'Hara)

Diagram #15 (Elements of Advertising)

Source Materials:
(A. Rodchenko)

Diagram #14 (Instigating Force of the Perpetual Motion Machine)

Diagram #13 (Six Theories of Language)

Diagram #12 (Proposal for a U.S.-Mexico Border Fence & Citizen Tunnel)

Diagram #11 (Primative Diagram of the Atom)

Diagram #10 (Regulations for Inflight Snake Storage)

Diagram #9 (Parts & Operations of the Arrow)

“Imagine this case: We give someone an order to walk
in a certain direction by pointing or by drawing an arrow
which points in the direction. Suppose drawing arrows
is the language in which we generally give such an order.
Couldn’t such an order be interpreted to mean that the man
who gets it is to walk in the direction opposite to that of the arrow?”
--Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book
(Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigations’)

Diagram #8 (Internal Processes of the Chimera)

Diagram #7 (Lucian's Isle of Dreams)

Lucian of Syria (c. 125 A.D.- c. 190 A.D.)

from A True Story (trans. Lionel Casson):
"There were dreams with wings, freakish dreams, and dreams which, dressed up like kings, queens, gods, and the like, looked as if they were going to a carnival. Many we recognized because we had seen them long ago. These actually came up and greeted us like old friends, then invited us into their homes and, putting us to sleep, extended us the warmest and most generous hospitality..."

Diagram #6 (Lake Vostok, Antarctica)

Schematic of L. Vostok

L. Vostok Exploration (Proposed/Pending)

L. Vostok Research & Documentation

Diagram #5 (Cyrano de Bergerac's 2 Architectures of the Moon)

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655)

Voyage to the Moon was published posthumously

Diagram #4 (The Travels of Patty Hearst)

Diagram #3 (Prototype for an Interstellar Theater)

Diagram #2 (Campanella's City of the Sun)

Tomasso Campanella (1568-1639) was a Calabrian monk
whose book 'Civitas Solis' (City of the Sun) describes a utopic city
on an island immediately south of the equator

Diagram #1 (Time Machine of A. Jarry)

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907)

Diagrams As Writing, Or A Writing

Bird & Forest
Ugly Duckling Press, 2005
ISBN: 1-933254-06-8

Available through:
Ugly Duckling
or
Small Press Distribution

"Bird & Forest is clear, beautiful writing. There is a simple quality of the well-told-tale to these fractured fables. This is a patient, wise and hilarious work whose intimate tone insinuates itself into your psyche only to have its way with you and then suddenly vanish. What more could you want?"--Laura Moriarty.

"With orations, fables, axioms, proofs, journals, and letters, Brent Cunningham offers a riposte to the confounding realities of empire just when we need it most. The repeated 'awakenings' of Bird & Forest suggest the wonder of conversion narrative without the ideological baggage. Engaging myriad rhetorical 'types,' he exhausts their function to disclose the backstory of creation, romantic love, and the curious permanence of warfare while gorgeously demonstrating the resilience of the imagination."--Peter Gizzi.