VILNIUS SEMINARS ON CARTOSEMIOTIC: IDEAS, EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES

A. Wolodtschenko¹, A. Cesnulevicius², A. Pilipaitis², G. Beconyte²

1 - Institute for Cartography at TU Dresden

2 - Centre for Cartography, Vilnius University, M.K. Ciurlionio 21/27, LT-03101 Vilnius, Lithuania, e-mail: giedre.beconyte@gf.vu.lt

alexander.wolodtschenko@mailbox.tu-dresden.de

The bi-annual scientific events have been jointly organized by the Commission for Theoretical Cartography of the ICA, the Centre for Cartography at Vilnius University and Lithuanian Cartographic Society since 2003. The seminars are designed for share of ideas and experience in the field of cartographic semiology, communication and literacy. Two paper and poster sessions, a round table discussion and digital proceedings after the seminar is becoming a tradition. The motto of the seminars was "Cartography and Cartosemiotics". Today cartography and cartosemiotics focus their research on education and other activities in interaction. But cartosemiotics has not only cartographic tradition; there is a semiotic tradition in cartography and beyond cartography. Cartosemiotics, in its various manifestations, is an important component of cartography, not only in Europe, but also in the rest of the world. The last decade of the 20th century has been characterized by considerable research activity in its theoretical and applied subfields. It is paradoxical, but cartography still does not have a discipline, which would deal with study and research of cartographic, map-like and cartographic-textual models (products) with a goal of acquisition of new spatial knowledge or revitalization of forgotten spatial information. Cartosemiotics, as a discipline studying features of diverse cartosemiotic models from the standpoint of modelling, communication and cognition, can and must become such a discipline. Different relevant resesarch topics were presented at Vilnius seminars. They are classified and discussed in the summarizing paper, in connection with the tradition of cartosemiotic research in Europe.