HUMAN WORLD.
A Demographic Atlas of Politics of Culture.
2001
Human World aims to display the world’s political and cultural information on a population basis. The project raises the question of understanding the politics of culture as a demographic challenge.
In these cartograms, each country is scaled proportionally to its population: 1 pixel equals 1,000 people. Territorial continuity is replaced by demographic weight, allowing political and cultural information to be read through population rather than geography.
The project refers to Alighiero Boetti’s work, reversing the association between flag and territory into a relationship between flag and population.
Human World depicts the demographic scenario of a world in which everyone is technically connected through the internet and social media. The first map of this ongoing project, Internet Users World Map (2001), was developed in reaction to the repression of the G8 protests in Genoa in 2001.
The series includes the following cartograms:
• Internet Users World Map, 2001
• Death Penalty Enforcement in World Countries, 2006
• Population Represented by Female Head of State, 2006
• Population in Free Countries, 2006
Displace - The project displaces political and cultural representation from territorial space to demographic scale, replacing geographic proportion with population-based visualization.
Expose- By rendering demographic data spatially visible, Human World exposes population as a primary political and cultural parameter, often obscured by territorial representation.
Mediate - Human World mediates complex political and cultural information through cartographic translation, allowing abstract data to be read as spatial relationships.
Selected Publications:
- A. Gurung, B. Mc Grath, J. Zha, China and India, Shifting Perspective on Urbanization and Globalization, India and China Institute, New School, New York, 2009, cover image.
- A. Branzi, Modernita' Debole e Diffusa. Il mondo del Progetto all'Inizio del XXI Secolo, Skira, Milano, 2006, pp-32-33.
- A. Scarponi, Political Population World Map, in Grahame Shane, Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture, Urban Design, and City Design. Wiley & Sons Ltd. Ed., West Sussex, England.
- A. Scarponi, Political Population World Map, in Anna Daneri, Italian mapping: cartographies and territories, in Version n .4, September 2003.
- A. Scarponi, Political Population World Map, in AA.VV., POLIS: Urban(e)motion, catalogue of the exhibition. Edizioni Palazzo Stella, Bologna, 2002.
Selected Exhibitions:
2007
Antonio Scarponi / Conceptual Devices, Galleria Contemporaneo, Mestre.
2003
MEDITERRANEA - 11th Biennal of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, Athens, Greece.
2003
EMPOWERMENT, Museo Villa Croce, Genova, Italy.
2002
POLIS URBAN [e]Motion, Chiesa di San Mattia, Bologna, Italy.










