Project Overview

The C-Scape Mapping Project (CMP) provides a common ground for diverse communities to collaborate and share a collective purpose: artists, writers, scientists, and students explore their relationships with Cape Cod's fragile ecosystems, and question current technologic methods for understanding them. Using these experiences, both individual and collaborative, project members create work out of their connection with the landscape, and bring this work back to their communities. Participants in the project meet and stay at the historic C-Scape Dune Shack, share their ideas with one another, and explore the wild and varied terrain of the seashore, dunes, vernal pools, and forests of the Province Lands area in the Cape Cod National Seashore Park (CCNSP). They develop creative projects which express their personal connection to the surrounding environment and assist each other with the development of the work.

This year the CMP has focused its efforts in creating community oriented outreach projects (a detailed description of this years work follows in the project history). We have continued our collaboration with the CCNSP Geographic Information Team, using the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system to create "virtual landscape art"; large scale landscape drawings made with aid of GPS computer mapping tools. We are currently designing a book to celebrate our three years of work in the dunes, and highlight our innovative accomplishments in the areas of Environmental Arts, Computer Mapping, and Environmental Education. The CMP is dedicated to its work with the community and to dissolving the boundaries between Science and Art. Our focus is cultural & environmental; exploring, creating, and communicating new ways to interact positively with the earth.

Project History

The C-Scape Mapping Project operates in partnership with The Provincetown Community Compact and The Cape Cod National Seashore Park: The C-Scape Dune Shack is an arts and healing refuge managed by the Provincetown Community Compact and located in the Province Lands of the CCNSP. The mission of the Compact's C-Scape Dune Shack Program is to "honor the historic use of the Dune Shack, while providing refuge and solitude amidst the wonder of the dunes. The Compact encourages visual artists, writers, performers, scientists, historians and others to reside in C-Scape and share their experience through their work." The CCNSP was set aside in 1961 to preserve the unique landscape of the Outer Cape and its cultural heritage. After two years as an active grass roots collaborative project, and generous support from both local individuals, institutions, and the LEF Foundation; The CMP, now in its third year, has matured and stabilized. The form and intention of the project are clear and the depth of the work and interaction with the community has deepened.

This years exhibition at the Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design serves as a good example. Sixteen project members contributed work to create a very strong and beautiful group exhibition, showing, in a variety of media, the results of a group and individual exploration of the internal and external landscapes in the Province Lands. To quote gallery director, Michael Carroll, "The C-Scape Mapping Project pulls elements together from many different aspects of the community, and creates a synergy of work which one normally does not find in such exhibitions. The exhibition had a very strong artistic presence." The Schoolhouse center has invited the project back for a second year as a result, and supports the project financially by sharing commissions from sales of work with the CMP.

We hosted a variety of community oriented educational projects this winter: Mary Alice Johnston in collaboration with the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans developed a landscape arts and mapping project for a small group of students, in which the students studied the Nazca Lines, and other large earth works. They finished the project by spending a day at the dune shack creating large GPS landscape maps and drawings. The Pond Village Zendo, a local Zen meditation group, led a "meditation walk" workshop at C-Scape culminating in a silent (and very slow) hike through the dunes to the ocean. Mark Adams, the Cape Cod National Seashore's Geographic Specialist, and CMP cofounder, led a one day GPS mapping project for the public at the Dune Shack. A group of Americorp volunteers took part, helping to create an elevation map of the surrounding dunes and whimsically naming the peaks around the shack. In the Fall of 1999 I designed and taught a 10 week environmental arts class (entitled ECOS) for a small group of students at Provincetown High School in collaboration with fellow CMP member Jennifer Bradley (a painter and educator). Students explored a variety of local ecosystems, discussed current environmental issues and created art works in the environment using natural materials.

This winter the CMP provided 11 of our 22 project members with residencies at the C-Scape Dune Shack, with two new writers, and one new artist joining the project and spending time in the dunes for the first time. It has been a particularly good group this winter in terms of project spirit and collaborative work. This spirit is being carried into our current project ; a celebration of our three years of work in the dunes, the C-Scape Mapping Project Book: Hidden Land - Art in the Environment. We are now in the design, collection, and fundraising stage of the project. Having found our voice in the Landscape, both as a group and individuals; the project is now in a strong phase of reaching out to a wider audience. Our range of community projects and the annual exhibition have proven that we can make a difference in the lives and outlook of our community members. It is clear that we have unique experiences and visions to share with the national and international environmental and arts movements.

The C-Scape Mapping Project Book Hidden Land - Art in the Environment will document the works and maps of project members from our first winter in 1997, through this Winter's residencies. It will include work from our group exhibition at the Schoolhouse Center last October, as well as our youth outreach collaborations with Provincetown High School and The Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School. Most importantly, the book will highlight the value of artists, scientists, and writers coming together to explore the environment, and create work out of their connection with the Province Lands unique landscape. The book project has three areas of focus: Virtual Landscape Art, "Green" Education and Mapping, and Artist Residencies in the Wild. In each of these areas we have done significant work: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GPS are now very hot technologies. They have entered the mainstream culture in a variety of areas , and our contribution to the dialogue concerning this technology is an important one. We have developed a way to use a system originally produced for missile guidance and now being pushed as a new electronic appliance commodity to create art and encourage reconnection with the landscape. In education we have held intuitive mapping workshops for both high school and middle school aged youth from local schools; encouraging them to observe the natural world that surrounds them and use it as a source of inspiration, instilling a sense of connection with the landscape and the subsequent development of an "ecological consciousness". Most importantly it is the perspectives of the project members who give the CMP its voice. Their residencies provide the creative foment that inspires a great variety of work and interaction, from Landscape video and photography to ritual performance, meditation pieces, sculpture, and painting. The book will first introduce the reader to the philosophical and conceptual background for the project: discussing "intuitive wandering", environmental art, and "virtual landscape art", and second illustrate these concepts through a portfolio of GPS works and examples of community projects. Third it will deepen the readers understanding through a cultural history, and more technical discussion of mapping, and finally open the reader to the myriad of ways one can connect with the environment through a selection of individual project members works and writings. The book will end with a section highlighting our collaboration with each of our partnership organizations. At this point, we are creating a manuscript, with which we will approach interested organizations and publishers. Hidden Land - Art in the Environment will present our unique vision and message to those interested in ecology, the environment, art, mapping and technology. We represent a diverse group of individuals presenting an important model for reconnecting with nature at a critical time in human and environmental history.

Mission Statement

The C-Scape Mapping Project provides a base for discussion and exploration of our connection to, and understanding of the landscape. Project members explore the ecology of the Province Lands with a deep appreciation for its beauty and importance to the human spirit, and use the unique GPS mapping technology for artistic and creative means. The project brings the results of this work to the communities of Cape Cod through both arts and interpretive exhibitions. The C - Scape Mapping Project enhances the missions of both the Provincetown Community Compact and the Cape Cod National Seashore Park by maintaining and deepening cultural understanding of the dune environment, and artistic use of the historic C-Scape Dune Shack. It operates as an educational resource partner with The Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, and the Provincetown High School Academy for Art, Science and Technology. The CMP is currently broadening the scope of its contribution to the environmental arts and activist movements through the development and production of its book, Hidden Land - Art in the Environment, and will continues its regional focus by holding its third annual exhibition in October of 2000 in collaboration with The Schoolhouse Center for Art and Design in Provincetown.