Sunday, January 10, 2010

Google Maps Based Art Project

Google is Not the Map

I may not know what I like but I know art when I see it.

A project of the Lisboa 20 Arte Contemporânea, LX 2.0, have commissioned 'imaginary' art-group Les Liens to produce a collection of 'GeoPoeMaps'. You may not agree that it is art but I think you will agree that it is fun.

The series of maps produced "become ... unusual surfaces used to disarticulate perceptions of the world, to trace new routes across the boundaries and to draw new imaginary geometries of the possible."

Translated into English I think that means they have superimposed a lot of bananas on top of Google Maps. Once the initial banana map has loaded you can navigate to the different maps by clicking on the 'north', east, 'south' and 'west' buttons.

Look out for the map with the 'day 1' button. In what is presumably a reference to Genesis, when you click on the '+' button a black dot grows on the map, until, when you reach day seven, the map of the Earth becomes a Google Sky map (Genesis in reverse).

The project obviously owes a little to René Magritte (see the 'Ceci n'est pas un plan' map). The deconstruction of Google Maps is probably best shown in the map that has the Google Maps controls flying all over the screen.

Actually, I do know what I like and I like this!

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