16. Panamania!

Panamania! has leveraged highly transformative techniques that in their distortions and player interactions present an encapsulating, complex and poignant understanding of migration in Panama. With an expanded our interpretation of migration to include a range of both human and non-human actors, we have been able to reflect the simultaneity and saga-like migratory paths and territorial negotiations. Further, with our distortion of space and time these migratory agents, or characters, are aligned as cohabitants of reality, in which diverse temporal journeys are shown to exist in relation and interaction of one another rather than in a contextual void. In conjunction, we have also provided a critique on traditional cartographic practice, in which objectivity is aspired for yet never achieved due to the innate spatial and temporal bias’s present in representation. These methods form the basis of our map, but it is with the gamification of the presented data that Panamania! becomes particularly relevant and effective. The audience becomes a player, and in turn exist in parallel to the characters of migration. As they engage with the map the player catalyses a unique potential narrative, which intrinsically links them to both the statistic and the character that statistic represents. Consequently, the map manifests as an expression of what exists as a statistical collective as well as the potential realities of the individual, in a way that coaxes emotive entanglements with the player (audience). In turn Panamania! the board game is an effective example of how gamification in cartographic practice can produce relatable, intelligible, and representative maps that in this case negotiate the complex multiplicities of migration and territorial negotiations in Panama.