Showing posts with label scopic_drives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scopic_drives. Show all posts
Uta(h)(k)
If you misspell Utah on Google Maps as Utak like we did recently, you will be taken to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan. Apparently, UTAK is the city's airport code. Some cursory searching tells us that somewhere nearby is a weather station that has been gathering data since 1883. And not much else.
But look to the right of the green arrow, and you'll see a series of horseshoe-shaped tumuli, each one measuring at least 100 feet wide, bisected at the middle, and paired with a linear mound in the front/back. The configuration reminds one of an amphitheater.
Lest someone tell us that they are simply defensive fortifications or ordnance storage bunkers or outdated meteorological instruments or the beta test site of Bush-Putin's Transcaucasian missile shield or Michael Heizer's Complex Four or ancient auroral observatories — don't!
Better to speculate than to be told the truth, right?
In any case, sensing that other places might also have their own lexical doppelgängers, which you can only navigate to via a careless mistype on Google Maps, we typed in Chiago, Ney York, New Yoirk, Califronia, Oaris, etc.
But rather than being sent to some antipodean other place, dotted with strange manmade formations that defy explanations by even the most seasoned CIA satellite intelligence analysts, Google asked us if we meant to type something else. Very irritating, to say the least.
One can't help but wonder, then, if Google is intentionally preventing us from finding these counter-sites and terrestrial obverses, and only through the most random slip of the fingers can we possibly break its algorithmic barrier and discover other Utaks. After all, online cartographers have stumbled into weirder places by accident before.
But look to the right of the green arrow, and you'll see a series of horseshoe-shaped tumuli, each one measuring at least 100 feet wide, bisected at the middle, and paired with a linear mound in the front/back. The configuration reminds one of an amphitheater.
Lest someone tell us that they are simply defensive fortifications or ordnance storage bunkers or outdated meteorological instruments or the beta test site of Bush-Putin's Transcaucasian missile shield or Michael Heizer's Complex Four or ancient auroral observatories — don't!
Better to speculate than to be told the truth, right?
In any case, sensing that other places might also have their own lexical doppelgängers, which you can only navigate to via a careless mistype on Google Maps, we typed in Chiago, Ney York, New Yoirk, Califronia, Oaris, etc.
But rather than being sent to some antipodean other place, dotted with strange manmade formations that defy explanations by even the most seasoned CIA satellite intelligence analysts, Google asked us if we meant to type something else. Very irritating, to say the least.
One can't help but wonder, then, if Google is intentionally preventing us from finding these counter-sites and terrestrial obverses, and only through the most random slip of the fingers can we possibly break its algorithmic barrier and discover other Utaks. After all, online cartographers have stumbled into weirder places by accident before.
Google Guerrilla
From the Telegraph, quoted at length:
Terrorists attacking British bases in Basra are using aerial footage displayed by the Google Earth internet tool to pinpoint their attacks, say Army intelligence sources.
Documents seized during raids on the homes of insurgents last week uncovered print-outs from photographs taken from Google.
The satellite photographs show in detail the buildings inside the bases and vulnerable areas such as tented accommodation, lavatory blocks and where lightly armoured Land Rovers are parked.
Written on the back of one set of photographs taken of the Shatt al Arab Hotel, headquarters for the 1,000 men of the Staffordshire Regiment battle group, officers found the camp's precise longitude and latitude.
“This is evidence as far as we are concerned for planning terrorist attacks,” said an intelligence officer with the Royal Green Jackets battle group. “Who would otherwise have Google Earth imagery of one of our bases?... We believe they use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas such as tents.”
Huangyangtan
“TerraServer appropriated as a guerilla tactic.”
Wedged
A detour upstream on the Ohio from the Mississippi brought me to Louisville, Kentucky. Google mapped above is the Great Lawn of the city's Waterfront Park designed by Hargreaves Associates. The grid meets topography meets infrastructure (soon meets OMA).
Tactical geoannexations
Inspired by Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, I went for a southbound cruise on the Mississippi River. Starting from Kaskaskia, the geoannexed former state capital of Illinois, I went in search for other traces of past geopolitical skirmishes. There were many, it seems.
One certainly feels lucky to have these Mississippian provinces culturally homogeneous and politically stable. Because what would happen if a wildly meandering river forms the international boundary of two future countries who consider the other their mortal enemy? What if after a major earthquake redraws the path of this river and the capital of one gets geoannexed by the other?
Now what would happen if you designed a park on anyone of these shifting territories, and the boundaries follow the meandering course of the river, rather than fixed to an ancient silhouette. And both sides are as heterogeneous as Israel and Palestine. You've gone for a stroll one afternoon, only to find the next day that the park had migrated to the other side, where roses are considered invasive species and fountains symbolizes the excesses and economic immorality of a capitalist society. Or capital punishment is legal on one side, outlawed on the other, and public hangings have suddenly become all the rage again. Or the frontline merely bisects the park for now.
Etc.
Huangyangtan, or: Tactical geoannexations, Part II
One certainly feels lucky to have these Mississippian provinces culturally homogeneous and politically stable. Because what would happen if a wildly meandering river forms the international boundary of two future countries who consider the other their mortal enemy? What if after a major earthquake redraws the path of this river and the capital of one gets geoannexed by the other?
Now what would happen if you designed a park on anyone of these shifting territories, and the boundaries follow the meandering course of the river, rather than fixed to an ancient silhouette. And both sides are as heterogeneous as Israel and Palestine. You've gone for a stroll one afternoon, only to find the next day that the park had migrated to the other side, where roses are considered invasive species and fountains symbolizes the excesses and economic immorality of a capitalist society. Or capital punishment is legal on one side, outlawed on the other, and public hangings have suddenly become all the rage again. Or the frontline merely bisects the park for now.
Etc.
Huangyangtan, or: Tactical geoannexations, Part II
TerraServer, Part II
I had planned on including a third image, that of Michael Heizer's City, to yesterday's entry but could not find one particular quote, which I was reminded of during my "scopic drive" through the West, in its entirety to accompany the image.
It's imperative to visit the sites. Maps lie; they are imperfect substitutes.
Michael Kimmelman, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," The New York Times Magazine (6 Feb 2005)
Michael Kimmelman, "Michael Heizer: A Sculptor's Colossus of the Desert," The New York Times (12 Dec 1999)
TerraServer
TerraServer, Part III
Dugway Proving Ground: or, TerraServer, Part IV
Icarus can ignore the tricks of Daedalus in his shifting and endless labyrinths. His altitude transforms him into a voyeur. It places him at a distance, it changes an enchanting world into a text. It allows him to read it, to become a solar Eye, a god’s regard. The exaltation of a scopic…drive. Just to be this seeing point creates the fiction of knowledge. Must one then redescend into the somber space through which crowds of people move about, crowds that, visible from above, cannot see there below. The fall of Icarus.
— Michael de Certeau, “Practices of Space”, in Marshal Blonsky On Signs (Basil Blackwell, London, 1985) pp. 122-49.
It's imperative to visit the sites. Maps lie; they are imperfect substitutes.
Michael Kimmelman, "Art's Last, Lonely Cowboy," The New York Times Magazine (6 Feb 2005)
Michael Kimmelman, "Michael Heizer: A Sculptor's Colossus of the Desert," The New York Times (12 Dec 1999)
TerraServer
TerraServer, Part III
Dugway Proving Ground: or, TerraServer, Part IV
TerraServer
Google Maps has garnered a lot of attention and praise recently, but I still prefer TerraServer for my aerial needs. Not only are the aerials switchable to corresponding USGS topgographic maps but each one comes with the all important geographic coordinates and scale.
Below are two aerials of two landmark works in land art. I have always wanted to search for them in TerraServer. Using directions culled from the web, now I have.
TerraServer, Part II
TerraServer, Part III
Dugway Proving Ground: or, TerraServer, Part IV
Below are two aerials of two landmark works in land art. I have always wanted to search for them in TerraServer. Using directions culled from the web, now I have.
TerraServer, Part II
TerraServer, Part III
Dugway Proving Ground: or, TerraServer, Part IV
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