THE ESTHETICS AND LOGIC CODES OF CARTOGRAPHIC SIGNS

Abstract

The language of cartography is a sign language, therefore every mapping starts with coding cartographic signs which function as a genetic support to the reality existing between the two opposing requests for constituting and founding the meaning, by the way of their esthetics and logic codes. This makes it generally possible for the language of cartography to be articulated and transmitted, primarily through visual images and subsequently as reflective contents. The esthetics code is an esthetic relationship that coordinates the construction of cartographic signs with the ruling cultural and esthetic criteria contemporary to the act of mapping. This functions in such a manner that from the perceptive-sensual (visual and kinetic) ideas about objects that are the subject of mapping, a constructive-artistic presentation is created with a balanced form of existence, as well as a from of action in a functional mode, pertaining not only to every single cartographic sing, but also to the cartographic key as a whole. Furthermore, from a subjective point of view, the esthetics code is related to esthetic needs, esthetic taste and esthetic sense of its author, the cartographer, which generates a feedback reaction effectuated as an esthetic impression, esthetic pleasure and esthetic delight of the reader or the user of the map. The logic code consists of basic logical operations posed in an interactive system of relations which relies on immediate sensual notions that make an autonomous measure of semantics of individual cartographic signs. Departing from comparison, identification of and discrimination between separated sections, the logical meaning of cartographic signs is established, on one side by modeling (through analysis — synthesis) and by comprehension (through generalization — specialization) which confirms their logical scope while, on the other side, shaping (typization) and expressing (classification) determinate their logical context. Cartographic textualization gives a full expression to the style and the purpose of cartographic signs in depicting the geographic-cartographic image of the world, since it is embedded in their esthetics and logic codes.