Re-enacting Tacit Knowledge in Colonial Mapping Practices

This text is an extended retrospective summary of Eva Sommeregger’s talk entitled “Navigating, Performing and Book Making”, given at the Tacit Knowledge Symposium at ETH Zurich during the Object Session Lineages on 20 June 2023. In the talk Eva Sommeregger presented her recently published book TUPAIA, KYBERNETES & LARA CROFT. Bodily Perspectives on Postdigital Spaces, Verlag Breite Gasse, Vienna, 2022. The digital version is also available on the TACK platform here. Here is her perspective: ¹ At this point I would like to thank Martin Rösch for his important insights and an in-depth conversation about where the tacit dimension can be found within the topics I shared.

Two different kinds of knowledge collided some 250 years ago when Tupaia, a Polynesian priest and navigator, boarded the British HMS Endeavour in Tahiti in 1769. The explorer James Cook, who commanded the Endeavour on his first Pacific voyage, let Tupaia steer the ship for over a month on his expansionist voyage, which aimed to map unknown areas in the Pacific: The crew on board were fascinated by Tupaia’s seafaring skills and his ability to point the way to various islands. They wanted to use this knowledge, which they could not yet understand, and came up with the idea of creating a map together with Tupaia. ² Two copies of the original map have been preserved: There is a copy in the British Library from 1769, attributed to James Cook and Tupaia, entitled “Copy Chart of the Society Islands”, listed as “British Library Board BL Add MS 21593.C” https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-society-islands (accessed 2023-07-31) and another, slightly different copy in the Braunschweig City Archives from 1776, drawn by Georg Forster, entitled “Copy of a Chart made by […] Tupaïa” and listed as “H III 16-87” https://www.uni-potsdam.de/en/iaa-alc/tupaias-map#c455961 (accessed 2023-07-31).

Tupaia’s map actually superimposed two very different ways of navigating and imagining the world. It was a mystery to scholars until literary scholars Lars Eckstein and Anja Schwarz deciphered it in 2019 by tracing the process of its creation through the crew’s diaries and recreating the map. ³ Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, The Making of Tupaia’s Map: A Story of the Extent and Mastery of Polynesian Navigation, Competing Systems of Wayfinding on James Cook’s Endeavour, and the Invention of an Ingenious Cartographic System, The Journal of Pacific History, Volume 54, 2019, pp.1-95; doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00223344.2018.1512369 According to them, the members of the scientific crew aboard the Endeavour prepared a layout featuring a coordinate system with an x and y axis, surrounded by a rectangular boundary: a sheet divided in four quadrants on which they marked the locations of the islands they already knew. To this group of islands, Tupaia then added the positions of about 70 islands—but using a method that did not conform to Western mapping conventions. Instead, Tupaia invented his own ingenious mapping method for the Europeans and drew several voyages across the vast Pacific Ocean, which stretch about 6000 km north-south from Hawaii to the Austral islands and about 8000 km east-west from the Easter Islands to Samoa.

List of Tupaia’s islands on a Mercator projection map (after Eckstein and Schwarz, 2019), drawn and numbering logic added by the author: 1 Rurutu, 2 Ra‘ivavae; 3 Rarotonga, 4 Niue, 5a Vava‘u, 5b Uiha; 6 Manuae, 7a Maupiha‘a, 7b Motu One, 7c Miti‘aro, 8a Mangaia, 8b ?, 8c Atiu, 9 Rimatara, 10 Rurutu, 11 Tupua‘I, 12 Ra‘ivavae, 13 Rapa Iti; 14 Uea, 15 Rotuma, 16a Savai‘I, 16b Uvea, 17a Upolu, 17b Niuafo‘ou, 18 Niatoputapu and Tafai, 19 Tutuila, 20 Manua, 21 Motu a Manu; 22 Ra‘ivavae, 23 Mangareva, 24 Temoe, 25 Oeno, 26 Pitcairn Island, 27 Henderson, 28 Ducie, 29 Rapa Nui; 30 Nuku Hiva, 31a Hiva‘Oa, 31b Ua Pou; 32 Marquesas Group, 33 Oahu; Photograph of the map displayed in the limited edition leporello version of TUPAIA, KYBERNETES & LARA CROFT. Bodily Perspectives on Postdigital Spaces

In the oceanic world model, the cosmos is in constant motion: ⁴ I am aware of the limited understanding of the oceanic world model that I have as a person socialised in Western culture. Nevertheless, I believe it is essential to challenge established Western theories with such powerful models of thought. Within this framework, I adopt a perspective that makes transparent and emphasises that it is situated knowledge: Situated knowledge, coined by Donna Haraway, is based on making visible the partial perspective from which a text or argument is constructed in order to critique the idea of absolute or universal positions that assume they are valid for all. Please see Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: the science question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective, ” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (Autumn 1988): p.580 The boat is the fixed element, with islands passing to the right and left, as are currents, constellations, positions of the sun and moon, flocks of birds and cloud formations. The navigators remembered orally, through songs, the routes that led from island to island, and passed them on from one generation of seafarers to the next through years of training. Oceanic navigators thus embodied the knowledge of wayfinding and enacted it when needed by locating themselves within the model of the world—which is difficult to reconcile with the worldview of a geographical projection that relies on an abstract representation of the world, such as a map, that exists independently of the navigator.

However, Tupaia invented his own mapping method, which enabled him to translate his knowledge into a two-dimensional drawing using travel routes from one island to the next. To find a direction from one island to the next on Tupaia’s map, two connections must be drawn from the departure island: one to the intersection of the x and y axes—the zero point or origin in Cartesian geometry—which represents north in Tupaia’s mapping logic, and another to the destination island; the resulting clockwise angle between these two (imaginary) lines marks the bearing, the direction to the destination island to be taken with the help of a compass. Tupaia must have observed that the compass played an important role for the Europeans in determining direction, and so he based his map for them on compass directions. According to Eckstein and Schwarz, these directions match remarkably well with the angle measurements on Mercator projection maps.

Detail from Tupaia’s map, displaying the bearing to get from Rurutu (1) to Ra’ivavae (2), redrawn by the author. One connection needs to be drawn between the departure and the destination island, another one from the departure island to the origin of the map. The resulting angle between the connections, measured clockwise, is the bearing. Photograph of the map detail displayed in the limited edition leporello version of TUPAIA, KYBERNETES & LARA CROFT. Bodily Perspectives on Postdigital Spaces

In Tupaia’s mapping logic, the absolute position of an island is not important, i.e. in which quadrant it is located—what counts is the connection between the islands. The measured distance is also not important. Moreover, the same island can appear several times in different places on Tupaia’s map if it is part of different voyages.

However, the crew of the Endeavour could not understand the map: If the position of the islands on the map had been correct, wouldn’t they have already passed many of the islands? The natural scientist and ethnologist Georg Forster copied Tupaia’s map on Cook’s subsequent voyage through the South Pacific on the HMS Resolution and mentioned the map in his travel report. Since the map made no sense to him, he even accused Tupaia of pretension and of “inventing” the map. ⁵ Georg Forster wrote: “Tupaya, the famous man who embarked at Taheitee in the Endeavour, had enumerated a much more considerable list of names, and had actually drawn a map of their respective situations and magnitudes, of which lieutenant Pickersgill obligingly communicated a copy to me. In this map we found all the names above-mentioned …but if his drawing had been exact, our ships must have sailed over a number of the islands which he had laid down. It is therefore very probable that the vanity of appearing more intelligent than he really was, had prompted him to produce this fancied chart of the South Sea, and perhaps to invent many of the names of islands in it.” in Georg Forster, A Voyage round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop Resolution, Commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years, 1772, 3, 4, and 5, London 1777, p. 398, see https://archive.org/details/b30413849_0001/page/398/mode/2up , accessed 31-07-2023; See also Dietmar Köring, Eva Sommeregger, Vessels for new digital landscapes. Proceedings of the (Building) New Perspectives Symposium in Riga, Latvia, 10th-11th November 2022. LMDA, Art Academy of Riga. 2023 In his travel report, Forster speaks of Tupaia’s islands’ “situations”, i.e. geographical locations, and “magnitudes”, i.e. size visible on the map, which clearly refer to the cartographic mapping logic of standardised Western mapping methods. Forster also created a stereoscopic projection map of the Southern Hemisphere himself to accompany his travel report, a well-chosen form of projection from a Western perspective, as it depicts the entire Southern Hemisphere as a circle: ⁶ Georg Forster, A Chart of the Southern Hemisphere, 1777, see https://archive.org/details/b30413849_0001/page/n8/mode/1up, accessed 31-07-2023 In it, Cook’s second Pacific voyage, drawn as a continuous line, is visible as a whole and is not intersected by the edge of a map, as it would be the case with a Mercator projection, whose left and right edges cut apart the Pacific.

Tupaia’s map, drawn by the author on Forster’s copy; the connecting lines between the islands and numbering logic were added by the author; the islands marked with an x were added by the Europeans to start the mapping process but Tupaia did not include them in his scheme.
1 Rurutu, 2 Ra‘ivavae; 3 Rarotonga, 4 Niue, 5a Vava‘u, 5b Uiha; 6 Manuae, 7a Maupiha‘a, 7b Motu One, 7c Miti‘aro, 8a Mangaia, 8b ?, 8c Atiu, 9 Rimatara, 10 Rurutu, 11 Tupua‘I, 12 Ra‘ivavae, 13 Rapa Iti; 14 Uea, 15 Rotuma, 16a Savai‘I, 16b Uvea, 17a Upolu, 17b Niuafo‘ou, 18 Niatoputapu and Tafai, 19 Tutuila, 20 Manua, 21 Motu a Manu; 22 Ra‘ivavae, 23 Mangareva, 24 Temoe, 25 Oeno, 26 Pitcairn Island, 27 Henderson, 28 Ducie, 29 Rapa Nui; 30 Nuku Hiva, 31a Hiva‘Oa, 31b Ua Pou; 32 Marquesas Group, 33 Oahu.
Photograph of the map displayed in the limited edition leporello version of TUPAIA, KYBERNETES & LARA CROFT. Bodily Perspectives on Postdigital Spaces

As Eckstein and Schwarz reconstructed from the Endeavour crew’s diary entries, Tupaia drew the map in a series of mapping sessions. ⁷ Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, 2019, op.cit. It remains unclear, however, why the Europeans could not follow Tupaia’s mapping method. In terms of structure, Tupaia’s map bears similarities to so-called travel route maps: The mediaeval map from London to Chambery in France by Matthew Paris, for example, omits cardinal directions and consists of a series of columns with a red line running from the bottom to the top of the column, connecting a series of villages, towns and cities shown in elevation ⁸ Matthew Paris, “Itinerary From London To Chambery,” In Matthew Paris’s “Book Of Additions,” 1250, listed “Cotton MS Nero D I, f.183v”, British Library; I certainly do not mention the existence of Matthew Paris’ map in this context to support any notion of a historical evolution from the itinerary map to the Mercator projection. Rather, I would like to emphasise the opposite, namely to read these forms of mapping synchronously side by side and juxtapose them. —showing that alternative forms based on travel routes existed in Europe as well. Embedded in the colonial mapping practices of the time, the concepts of grid projection, which organise the transfer of geometries from a three-dimensional surface to a two-dimensional surface, were adopted by cartographers without realising that they were not the but only one out of many ways to draw a map: Western concepts of grid projection are a form of knowledge that contains a tacit dimension ⁹ The tacit dimension is defined by Michael Polanyi as the form of knowledge that is difficult to verbalise but is nevertheless considered knowledge: “we can know more than we can tell” See Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, Doubleday, Garden City, New York, 1966. p.4. In her thought-provoking keynote lecture at the Tacit Knowledge Symposium at ETH Zurich on 19 June 2023, Elke Krasny pointed out that Polanyi himself supported his theory of the tacit dimension with an example that needs to be looked at afresh in today’s context: Polanyi employs a visual profiling technique introduced by the police at the time, using a series of images of facial features, such as noses, eyebrows, etc. From today’s perspective, it must be noted that these visual facial elements come with a strong racial bias. See ibid, pp.4-5 that is evident in Forster’s false accusation and highlights the limits of understanding of Western scientists and crews.

The connections between the islands that make up the itinerary—the connections on which Tupaia’s mapping logic is based and which an oceanic navigator would construct in their imagination and enact—are not shown in the versions of Tupaia’s map that we know; they had to be reconstructed by Eckstein and Schwarz as part of their process of deciphering and redrawing the map. Other drawings made by Tupaia, such as a series of watercolours, have survived in their original state, ¹⁰ See for instance a drawing by Tupaia from 1769 titled ‘Maori trading a crayfish with Joseph Banks’, part of the British Library collection, listed ‘Add MS 15508, f.12’ https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/maori-trading-a-crayfish-with-joseph-banks, accessed 2023-07-31 while the map has survived only in redrawn versions: one of these preserved copies was made by Cook at the time the map was drawn by Tupaia and traced the third draft phase of the map; the other copy is by Forster, who copied the first draft phase on a later voyage. ¹¹ Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, 2019, op.cit.——- We can only speculate what the original draft stages of the map must have looked like.

The status of the map of Tupaia is an interesting one. It differs from other artefacts displayed in Western ethnographic collections, where the dominance of a so-called dominant culture over a dominated, so-called less developed culture is presented through the display of trophies—as in the case of the Polynesian paddles from Cook’s voyages, which are part of the collection of the Weltmuseum Wien, the ethnographic collection in Vienna. ¹² Philipp Blom, To Have and To Hold, Abrams Press, New York, 2004 I argue that Tupaia’s map is not suitable as a trophy because (a) the original has been lost, which undermines the competence of so-called ruler culture to preserve objects intact. (b)The map is too complex and was not understood for a long time, so it shows the lack of Western knowledge and understanding. (c)To make the map understandable, a re-enactment is needed, as was done by literary scholars by redrawing the map step by step, island by island—re-enactments, however, are often used subversively in art to challenge and reinterpret traditional readings of history.

Re-enactments have also played an important role in criticising the Western version of the settlement of the Polynesian Triangle and proving that it is possible to navigate the Pacific without instruments, using ancient methods of wayfinding: Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson—now president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society—sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1980 without modern navigation technology after receiving training from master teacher Mau Piailug. ¹³ Nainoa Thompson, n.d., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nainoa_Thompson; accessed 2023-07-31

Similar to a re-enactment, the practice of re-drawing is a means of investigation that aims to create a new position that differs from established readings and to achieve results that would not be possible with the usual methods. ¹⁴ Angelika Schnell, Eva Sommeregger, Waltraud Indrist (eds.) entwerfen erforschen. Der ‘performative turn’ im Architekturstudium, Birkhäuser Publishing, 2016 Eckstein and Schwarz necessarily had to redraw the map to unveil its hidden logic. Through their drawing practice, the previously misunderstood mapping logic invented by Tupaia was restored; likewise, the re-drawing practice reveals the tacit dimension of stubbornly applied Western mapping conventions. It is noteworthy that a drawing discrepancy, identified by Eckstein and Schwarz as a crucial difference between the two versions, led to their decipherment of the map: In Cook’s copy, a British naval vessel named “Avatea” is drawn next to the intersection of x and y axis. In Forster’s copy, the ship has been transformed into an island named “Avatea”. In the crew’s lists of islands mentioned by Tupaia, there is no island of this name. Therefore, Eckstein and Schwarz assume that Tupaia’s use of “Avatea,” literally “god of light,” alluded to the British military procedure that was carried out daily on deck at noon (when the sun was north in the southern hemisphere), using a sextant and compass to determine the ship’s current geographic position. ¹⁵ Lars Eckstein, Anja Schwarz, 2019, op.cit Thus, “avatea” stands not only for north on Tupaia’s map, but also for a practice of determining position or bearing—a multidimensional activity in which the dimensions of time and space are not separated, following the oceanic model of the world.

Ultimately, a series of re-drawings of a lost original was required to reveal the mapping logic conceived by Tupaia. The more recent re-drawings were made with the intention of bringing to the surface hidden moments of history, and in the case of my re-drawings, their tacit preoccupations and standards.