Emma McNally – Emergent Cartographies

F5 (detail) – Emma McNally

Cartographic conjecture, emergent systems and experimental musical notation all coalescent in the space planes of Emma McNally’s drawings. The pieces, done with graphite on paper, are dense with interconnected and intersecting shapes – squares, circles and dots rhythmically layered to create dense three-dimensional spaces. Biological and cellular processes are also evoked, Apotosis, being a fine example. Our friend wikipedia informs us that Apotosis ‘is the process of programmed cell death (PCD) that may occur in multicellular organisms. Maps and mappings also figure heavily – imagined paths, trajectories and psychogeographic boundaries of possible journeys are implied. Beyond mappings of physical space we also find notations of dataspace in the nodal connections of imagined networks. Those familiar with the classic mappings of cyberspace will immediately fill comfortable with the recursive branchings in the piece Contagion Cage. All pieces imply the micro and macroscopic, often simultaneously, from teeming constellations of axons and dendrites to the conjunctions of celestial cells and organelles.br