ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a subjective and exploratory reading of each artwork and consider the modes of visualisation that are at stake in terms of their making a critical response to the phenomenon of drone viewing. It elaborates a conception of the cartographic and cultural figure of the antipodes as a cartographic abstraction. The book focuses on a sound sculpture by sound artist Bill Fontana and describe this installation as performing a mode of cartographic viewing that ‘immerses’ the viewer within the viewed space as it depicts an abstraction of the River Thames within a subterranean architectural space. It outlines some proposed relationships between the modes of cartographic abstraction at work in the formation of a nuanced range of viewpoints that are both deployed in and themselves problematise modes of cartographic viewing.
