A Synesthete’s Atlas: Cartographic Improvisations Between Eric Theise & Ed Osborn
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States
The Map Center
Real-time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps by Eric Theise, in collaboration with Ed Osborn’s real-time wrangling of live electronics and saturated field recordings. A visual wash of street grids, land masses, water bodies, and curiosities from built and natural environments. Resonant openings and switchbacks. Orphaned labels. Free-floating symbology. Difference tones and untethered drones. Saturated colors and the subtlest of tints. Jittery zooms, pans, and traversals. Noisy apertures and sonic fissures. Glitches from crowdsourced data.
The performance will last 50 minutes and will occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.
Thu, Sep 25, 2025
6:30p preception / 7p show
$10 general / $8 students
NOTAFLOF
Many thanks to Andrew Middleton and Jordan’s Jungle.
Bios
Eric Theise is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video, performance, and works on paper he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, the Light and Space movement, and 60's light shows – with the occasional injection of letterform experiments inspired by visual poetry – as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography. Theise manipulates projected digital maps in performance with musicians and other time-based artists under the title A Synesthete's Atlas. Since its Lisbon premiere in 2022, Synesthete's has been performed in forty-plus North American and European cities.
Ed Osborn works with many forms of electronic media including installation, video, sound, and performance. He has presented his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the singuhr-hörgalerie (Berlin), the Berkeley Art Museum, Artspace (Sydney), the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), the ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe), Kiasma (Helsinki), MassMOCA (North Adams), the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Belfast). Osborn has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Creative Work Fund, and Arts International and been awarded residencies from the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Elektronmusikstudion (Stockholm), STEIM (Amsterdam), and EMPAC (Troy, NY). He is Professor of Visual Art and Music at Brown University.
What does a map store in 2025 look like? We still have maps, trail guides, atlases and books like we’ve always had but now we’re leaning into the things that give maps meaning. The Map Center is for the curious, the adventurous at heart, the playful. We have art, posters, globes and geographical oddities to tickle the imagination and help you see the world in a new way. It’s a fun and educational visit for all ages and a lovely, eye-opening hour spent with your family while out and about or on vacation to the beautiful beaches of Rhode Island. We also have high resolution scanning, printing, mounting and framing for images of all kinds. It’s a new kind of a store for a very old thing.