BCA-I: Collaborative Drawing

BCA-I: Collaborative Drawing

At the beginning of the project, the question was often, who is going to draw? Because, if you are going to draw with more than one person, which is not as handy and simply as sending a text document and working with more than one person in the document, how do all these drawing styles and techniques work together? Like combining English, Spanish and Dutch. Using roughly the same characters, but a different language. Because performing the BCA’s and capturing them in the corresponding instrument is an individual process, this subject of collaboration was not on the foreground. However, once setting up the BCA-N (which allows to print a map with strips of more than one author) the subject becomes more urgent. By keeping the direction of the BCA-I’s tight and choosing a single representation technique, the BCA-N’s filter system re-compositions the strips and therefore maps and drawings smoothly. Noticing different languages but somehow understanding them all. A truly collaborative research result. 

  • Writing an academic piece is never a one-person show. Many proof -and draft readings by friends and colleagues are undertaken before the work gets printed and published. Editors bring a different, fresh eye to the work and are able to clarify messy parts of the work that were not even noticed by the writer. Proof readings whether it is the final editor or not help the writer to stay on the main road, built bridges where the writer got lost and might even restructure parts and pieces. It is no different in the history of maps.1William Zinsser, ‘On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 405-415 The publisher, cartographer, adventurer, etcher, the craftsmen adding colour or characters could all be different persons all adding from their field of expertise to one main research document. Building on this, the BCA-N firstly allows to join the input and expertise of different border crossers with, secondly the grid as alternative editor keeping an eye on the overall work tidying up inconsistencies. 

[1]William Zinsser, On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 405-415.