Cartografias Criativas De Cartógrafos Ficcionais: Técnica, Referência e Estilos

Abstract

The practice of creating fictional worlds is directly associated with the human capacity to imagine and attribute meanings to space. Since ancient times, fantasy and unknown lands have fueled human utopias. The raw material for the creative process of fictional worlds is associated with experience, memory, perception, imagination and the context of the visual culture in which a subject is inserted. The images we see change our perception and understanding of the world, as they act on our emotions and ideas, continuously throughout life. Researchers in the field of Critical Cartography rethink the role of maps in everyday life and their social effects, as well as their historical use associated with the modern-colonial European spatial project and the cultural hegemony of the Global North. From this, the question arises whether the use of Cartography to create fictional worlds is not associated with the saturation of themes in the literary genre of High Fantasy, based on the paradigm of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. The objective of this work is to understand the process of creating fictional worlds from maps, considering the imaginary and visual culture of Brazilian and American fictional cartographers. The research was constructed procedurally and using different methodologies in Brazil and the United States, based on creative exercises and guided by questionnaires, focus groups, interviews and Creative Cartography exercises (non-sampling). The analyses followed three axes of discussion: technique, references and visual styles of fictional maps. This is qualitative research situated in the context of Critical Cartography, considering mapping as a process that is part of human visual culture and essential for understanding human and cultural dynamics. Among the results found is the idea that spatial experience is the raw material for the creation of original worlds, as well as overcoming the ethnocentrism of the North. It also delves into the question of how cartographic art has the function of narrative construction and cultural anchoring for fictional maps, beyond ornamentation and decoration. It is expected that the research will produce geographical reflections on the production and types of space produced in fictional maps in both Brazil and the United States.