In Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives, the authors propose “deep mapping” as a critical method that integrates geographic space with cultural meaning, combining quantitative data, qualitative stories, and historical layers into a multi-dimensional, narrative-rich representation of place. Unlike traditional maps, which flatten space into abstract, often colonialist systems of control, deep maps emphasize complexity, contradiction, and local knowledge. There are some key points in Deep Maping:

1. Spatial Narrative: The authors argue that place is not neutral. It is constructed through stories, memories, and politics. Deep maps highlight how space becomes place through lived experience, challenging dominant cartographic traditions that erase local, emotional, or indigenous meanings.

2. Multiplicity and Layering: Deep maps don’t aim for a single “truth.” Instead, they layer multiple voices and temporalities by incorporating oral histories, ecological data, folklore, scientific observations to show how meaning accumulates unevenly over time.

1. Technological Mediation: Digital tools like GIS, 3D modelling, and interactive databases enable new forms of spatial storytelling, but the authors warn against using them solely for “objective” data presentation. Instead, they propose that technology be used to express subjectivity, memory, and cultural narrative.

2. Resistance to Colonial Mapping: The deep map is proposed as a resistance to Enlightenment-based mapping, which served imperial and extractive purposes by rendering territory visible, legible, and controllable. Deep maps can instead support counter-mapping, offering marginalised perspectives and re-mapping histories that have been suppressed.

My practice-based research examines Taiwan’s colonial history through the growth and visualization of Phalaenopsis orchids, a species with deep cultural and economic ties to Taiwan, but also a history embedded in Japanese imperial botanical science and global orchid trade. Deep mapping offers a powerful methodological framework for my work in several ways:

1. Challenging Colonial Botany: Like colonial cartography, colonial plant classification and visualization reduced ecological richness to systems of control. A deep map approach allows me to layer historical botanical documents, personal narratives, and indigenous ecological knowledge, resisting the flat, extractive gaze of empire.

2. Spatializing Orchid Histories: Phalaenopsis orchids were catalogued and circulated through colonial infrastructure, including Japanese botanical stations and imperial gardens. Deep mapping can visualize these networks of movement and extraction, situating orchid growth in relation to Taiwan’s colonial geography.

3. Biopolitics and Sensorial Mapping: My use of Playtronica and other sensory technology can be framed as a form of sensorial deep mapping that brings orchid vitality into a spatial and sonic narrative that foregrounds nonhuman agency and ecological interdependence.

4. Decolonial Storytelling: By incorporating oral histories, folklore, or personal memory, my work can transform orchid data into a multivocal, spatial narrative that resists singular or colonial readings. For instance, visualizing the orchid’s growth through interactive media or speculative landscapes might offer counter-cartographies of Taiwanese identity.

In conclusion, in your research, Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives provides a conceptual and methodological path to re-map Taiwan’s colonial landscapes through the orchid. It gives me tools to deconstruct colonial knowledge structures and build a new kind of cartography that listens to the orchid’s signals, remembers erased histories, and honours local ecologies through layered, embodied storytelling.