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Maps invite the imagination across them by text as much as any other element. The reader of maps might be nostalgic for a street in Beijing that contains memories of a university, a particular restaurant in an adjoining alley, a phrase spoken by another human being there, and the term 'Zhonghua Rd', properly situated, will give rise to these... His eye might pursue a rail line across Eastern Europe with anticipation, and names like Warsaw, Sarajevo, Zagreb, pregnant with associations, with dreams, will increase his excitement ... but in this diptych text is totally absent. The untutored reader perceives a nexus of points without orientation or designation, and with no hierarchy but the varying size of the points he guesses are cities - a compass rose, or even a mark of orientation, would be inappropriate. The map describes a system that requires a tremendous amount of energy and a great degree of chance (a plane may or may not fly as scheduled, it may be hijacked, delayed for mechanical reasons, or the airline might go broke - where a mountain is almost always comelled to appear where a map suggests)... yet rendered in abstract lines and dots the reader is paradoxically made to feel secure and utterly lost at the same time. The map possesses a cold beauty that seems to remove the human element in a very human activity. Perhaps the beauty comes from 21st century Man's desire to be both irresponsible and safe, away and at home. Perhaps it is the beauty of distance, the same we perceive looking from a high point across the changing faces of a city at night, not comprehending any of the abstract signs.
L&B say they are interested in the feedback between man and his creations. Here there is no static. No noise. A series of accidents seems to have become inevitable. The air travel of the British Isles is a perfect system in this map. Man feels neither precedence nor power over the system.
