PONRABBEL AND DEEPmapping

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As on ongoing project PONRABBEL sets out to explore the complexities that make places –  here the Tamar/Esk region however that is variously imaged. DEEPmapping is a a kind of cultural metaphor that has its roots in cartography and mathematics employed that come together to give some tangibility, and an ability to measure, 'place'. Mapping is about identifying interconnectedness of a spectrum of elements that come together to give places their placedness and allows for the multi--dimensional expression of our understandings of place – our stories, our myths, our gossip, our histories, our imagery, our cultural practices, our placescaping, our music, our poetry etc, . 

For PONRABBEL an exemplar of DEEPmapping can be found in the work of COMMON GROUND in England. They say of themselves, "Common Ground is a charity that explores the relationship between nature and culture through music, sculpture, poetry, film, markets, photography, architecture, gardening, publishing and pamphleteering. The idea of Local Distinctiveness, pioneered in 1985 by [the] co-founders Sue Clifford and Angela King, percolates through everything [the organisation does]. We believe that people can make a positive difference to their own localities and we want to inspire them to get involved in the life of their local environment. We champion democratic involvement and believe that celebration is a starting point for action to conserve, enrich and improve the quality of everyday places." The COMMON GROUND GALLERY offers some insights into the DEEPmapping (cultural mapping of a kind) the COMMON GROUND operation has been involved with since inception.

One of COMMON GROUND's projects was/is working with communities to map their 'placedness'. The project was called "Parish Mapping"  which in England come with a full set of histories etc. In an Australian vernacular sense the project might be better understood as a kind of MUDmap of a place.

However, while sharing an approach to imagining and understanding place, PONRABBEL does not set out to mimic COMMON GROUND in any overt way. Rather, PONRABBEL sets out to engage with an Antipodean, cum Tasmanian, cum Tamar/Esk set of sensibilities and sensitivities in a 21st C context. Similarly, in a postcolonial context, PONRABBEL sets out to interrogate the myriad of ways all this may be, and is, understood and expressed in locally and distinctive ways – and in an increasingly 'globalised' world that tends to mitigate against 'local distinctiveness'.

Vintage Tamar Apple Box Labels

PONRABBEL is looking to put together a network of artists, designers, historians, curators, theorists and scientists who have an interest in investigating, through their individual perspectives and practices, 'their senses of place' and do so via their interfacing sensibilities. From the landscape to the people and via their cultural understandings, both past and present, the aim being to make comment on, to reflect up[on, to come to know and to remember what it is that makes a place, a place – what it is that grants us our placedness.

Within in the propositions of 'placedness' and DEEPmapping there is the germ of an idea that seems to be saying that through the investigation of one site with its particular features and histories, we can come to know many places. We may even come to understand other places better. In the way of chaos theory a fraction comes to represent the whole.


Arguably, PONRABBEL is embarked upon a kind of cultural adventure. The outcomes from the investigation are expected to be published and represented in this site. Ultimately PONRABBEL's activities may well come to include community conferences and symposiums, travelling and digital exhibitions plus books, pamphlets and documentaries.

DEEPmapping in a 21st C context is an expanding concept as technologies catch up with cultural producer's imagings and cultural producers expand their practices to take advantage of the ever increasing opportunities to 'map' things in new and rhizomic ways.

The Polish-born, French and American mathematician, Benoit B. Mandelbrot  (1924 – 2010) was a  noted for developing a "theory of roughness" and "self-similarity" in nature and the field of fractal geometry – which included coining the word "fractal". He later discovered the Mandelbrot set of intricate, never-ending fractal shapes,named in his honor which in a sense is an exemplar of mapping a concept, in Mandelbrot's case 'chaos' and the order to be found in it.

Click here to watch a demonstration