The UC Berkeley GIS & Mapping Community of Practice and the Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (CNMAT) will host Eric Theise at CNMAT for a lecture/demonstration titled Eight Stories High, Comically Lo-Res, Visible for Twenty Miles: Spiraling Maps Atop Salesforce Tower on March 13, 2024, 11-12:30 pm.

Theise will talk about his influences, the crowdsourced data and open source technologies he uses, the challenges of designing for a determinedly low resolution yet enormous, wraparound display, and the joys of collaborating with musicians/sound designers using a wide variety of instrumentation. He'll close with a demo of his Carto-OSC platform.

Since its Lisbon premiere in April 2022, Eric Theise has given thirty-some performances of A Synesthete's Atlas–during which he manipulates projected digital maps in collaboration with improvising musicians–across North America. His Carto-OSC began life as a rapid prototyping tool for designing web maps but morphed into the platform he uses for real-time cartography and video creation. February found his single-channel work, If Map #5, appearing on the eight story high display that crowns San Francisco's Salesforce Tower, the second tallest building west of the Mississippi River. A series of performances within and beyond the Tower's viewshed continue through April.

Eric Theise (he/him) is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video and real-time performance tools, he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and visual poetry as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography. His concerns include perceptual pleasure and fatigue, geographies of the natural and built environment, and subverting the presumed objectivity and authority of maps. He holds a Ph.D in Operations Research from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences at Northwestern University.

The GIS & Mapping Community of Practice is an informal meetup that offers participants an opportunity to get to know other people using mapping tools and techniques across campus, regardless of discipline. Whether you're just getting started exploring GIS & Mapping or a seasoned pro (or anywhere in between!), all are welcome to participate in the GIS & Mapping Community of Practice. Bring your questions and get excited to meet fellow mappers!

Admission Information: This event is free and open to the public.

Some media examples from Eric Theise- lightly polished drone footage of the Tower: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10862581- a short compilation of performance extracts: https://vimeo.com/erictheise/a-synesthete-s-atlas-compilation- a list of past & upcoming performances: https://erictheise.com/a-synesthete-s-atlas