Cartography of RelativeIndeterminacy: Hannibal’s Alpine Passage
2009, Diploma Unit 15, Architectural Association
Karl Kjelstrup-Johnson
Kjelstrup-Johnson maps a landscape of relative indeterminacy/determinacy for the Alpine topography using the ‘marching day’ in Livy’s account of the passage as a space–time unit. Each square is one marching day, with size indicating the difficulty of the terrain crossed: a big square means easy conditions, a small one more difficult routes. Embedded in this model is a semi-indeterminate event-network in which known instances – such as setting frozen rocks on fire, losing yet another elephant or skirmishes with hostile tribes – mediate with each other in order to establish the most likely ‘optimised’ route.