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.

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 Heizer, City, Under construction. 09 km N of Las Vegas, Nevada, United States 9/24/1999.)

Articles:
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)

In the Archives:
TerraServer

Future Tense:
TerraServer, Part III
Dugway Proving Ground: or, TerraServer, Part IV