Approaching the Acoustic Dimension in Cartographic Theory and Practice

An Example of Mapping Estonia(n)

Abstract

The opportunity to integrate the acoustic dimension into multimedia cartographic products bears a high potential for the creation of appropriate teaching and learning materials. For the study of linguistic features in the Estonian language – especially grammatical aspects – an audio-visual e-learning application, which is based on the technical means of Adobe® Flash®, has been created in the Geography Department at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. The communication system of this tutorial is especially focused on some features of the acoustic dimension. Using references from various academic disciplines, this paper comprises three main objectives: the presentation of the application’s didactic concept, the description of the functionalities and correlations of the visual and acoustic dimension within the communication system and, finally, the disclosure of a catalogue of study questions that came up during the application’s planning, implementation and reflection phase. These possible questions for future research on cartosemiotics and theoretical cartography are mainly related to the, by now, scientifically unheeded acoustic dimension within the framework of the communication system of polysensory cartographic representations.