Mapping and Other Technologies

A ‘map’ isn’t necessarily something used to navigate through unfamiliar territory; it’s also a visual ordering of features and information…a means of making sense of our physical surroundings in new ways. Alexander 2013 p67

Liz Nicol the Rubber Band Project (1997)

Ian Brown’s series Walking the Land (2007)

Other artists and photographers who layer numerous different photographs include Idris Khan, Jon Spencer and Isidro Ramirez.

Creative possibilities  have been opened up by digital technologies like:

  •  Google Earth (2005): allows users to make a journey to literally anywhere in the world from the comfort of their computer, scrolling around sites of interest from the vantage point of Google’s satellite images.
  • Google Street View (2007): is limited in terms of its global coverage, but provides a more intimate, street-level view of our landscape.

‘Stay-at-home street photographers’ who have used these images – trawling through endless Street View images, framing and selecting these digital views as their own photographs – as a form of ‘appropriation’ art include:

 Project 2.4: Is appropriation appropriate?


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