Mandala: Buddhist Map
My uncle, Paul Jasmer, is a monk at St. John's college in MN. A few months ago, some Buddhist monks visited the school, and made a Mandala, that are made with colored sand, and are a 2-dimensional representations of 3-dimensional palaces. Each of the four sides is a palace gate, and the monks visualize the 3-D form as they lay down the sand. A few years ago, a young Tibetan monk worked with a team of computer graphics students at Cornell, and they created a great, short video "walk-through" translating between the two forms. Here's a link to an excerpt on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx4mdjMIqN
In making the Mandala, the Buddhist monks start from the centre of the circle and work their way out. Sand of different colours is put into narrow tubes and then sprinkled into place according to a set design. After the entire Mandala is completed, there is a ceremony, and then the sand is scooped up and poured into a flowing stream as a way to purify the planet.
The whole process seems very interesting. Sometimes, when talking about mapping, I feel bogged down by the typical defenitions of maps... creating a "true" map with a key, a scale, accurate lines, a compass, a title, etc. This Mandala helped me think more artistically and emotionally about maps. I feel I have been conditioned to see the idea of maps as "true" maps, and I love that we are able to expand the ideas of mapping into the artistic region. Now I feel that we could map anything, not just space or time, and map it beautifully, instead of traditionally.
-JennyParker
Comments
I also felt bogged down by the traditional definition of a map. If you would have asked me to visualize a map before I took this class, I would have pictured a typical large city map folded down into a more manageable size- or the Kings map which I am using on our project to exorcise a few of my "map demons." I can picture the Mandalas you wrote about. I think there was/is one at the MIA. They are beautiful. I would never have thought of a Mandala as a map, but now I do. While working on ideas for this project, I kept thinking about other things that we don't call maps- like charts or directions- are they maps? In a recipe we start at a beginning and go through a series of steps to get to an end- is that a map? I'm also really enjoying that we are able to create our own ideas of maps artistically instead of traditionally.
Posted by: Julie Streitz | March 27, 2007 9:02 AM