reimagined satellite imagery

Satellite mapping platforms turn the world into visible and navigable spaces with an aura of the photographically real about them.
acquisitive-eye, the project name for this photographically-based encounter with networked space, engages with the imagery to investigate the nature of the tools, the often semi-fictitious outputs and the spaces revealed.

On this site, one project uses outputs to investigate the world as a set of human-altered territories and another catalogues the failures of the platforms through faulty and glitched outputs. A third looks specifically at cloud forms in Google Earth relating them back to Steiglitz ‘Equivalents’ . And a fourth takes on Google Earth 3D mode where Google allows us to fictitiously enter the inside of buildings, landscapes and even trees.

In an extended essay, presented at the 2024 ADA Symposium notions of the supra-photographic nature of satellite imagery are examined along with the implications of a neo-colonial attitude that pervades aspects of Google Earth.