Resolution Frontier

Besler & Sons, LLC

Resolution Frontier

Google Los Angeles Resolution Frontier (Trailer)
Google Mexico City Resolution Frontier (Trailer)
Sight Sites, Tijuana

Group screening, Roundhouse Platform, Escuela Libre de Arquitectura

    Workshop Organizers:
  1. Noémie Despland-Lichtert
  2. Brendan Shea
Expanding Fields, Lexington
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Group exhibition, Loudon House, Lexington Art League

    Exhibition Curator:
  1. Catherine Wentworth
Log 36: ROBOLOG
    Guest Editor:
  1. Greg Lynn
Now, There…, Shenzhen
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Group exhibition, Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture (UABB)

Now, There… received the Bronze Dragon Independent Jury Award

    Press Coverage:
  1. Archinect
    Exhibition Curators:
  1. Tim Durfee
  2. Mimi Zeiger
Now, There…, Pasadena

Group exhibition, Wind Tunnel Graduate Center for Critical Practice

    Exhibition Curators:
  1. Tim Durfee
  2. Mimi Zeiger
ISEA 2015: Disruption, Vancouver

Group exhibition, International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA)

    Moderators:
  1. Kate Armstrong
  2. Malcolm Levy
Pidgin Magazine No. 19 Magic
    Editor:
  1. Melissa J. Frost
ISDC 2014: A Space Renaissance, Los Angeles

Group exhibition, International Space Development Conference (ISDC), National Space Society

    Curator:
  1. Azam Shaghaghi
My Own Private Google Earth, Pasadena

Group exhibition, Wind Tunnel Graduate Center for Critical Practice

This project originated as part of a graduate thesis at the Media Design Practices program at ArtCenter College of Design.

    Lead Advisors:
  1. Tim Durfee
  2. Ben Hooker
    Writing Advisors:
  1. Jane McFadden
  2. Mimi Zeiger
    Adjunct Advisors:
  1. Garnet Hertz
  2. David Leonard
    Program Director:
  1. Kevin Wingate
    Program Chair:
  1. Anne Burdick

As digital representations become the predominant imagery that shapes our routine experiences and understanding of the environments around us, our capacity to influence, edit, reject, or undermine the objectivity and apparent immutability of the depiction is critical. Delineating and giving names to edges like the frontier of Google Los Angeles, or appropriating the humorless sobriety of Google Earth’s renderings of Africa on the moon, opens a discussion around the embedded assumptions for all simulations and representations that might appear on our screens. It isn’t so much that, as a place, Google Los Angeles is less legitimate or real than the County of Los Angeles or the lunar landing site in Google Sudan. Google Earth collapses the distinction between geopolitical or historical boundaries and the user’s own contrivances.

The resolutions and fidelities that Google Earth favors and neglects point to the mutability of all maps, models, territories, borders, and frontiers. The spaces that dictate the encounter, whether engineered by Google, Apple, Microsoft, governments, or militaries, or open-source communities, rely on certain concessions from the user: for instance, that political borders and place names are as real as coastlines and mountain ranges. But geobrowsers and mapping applications provide interfaces, authoring tools, and means of distribution with a certain amount of influence that was previously unattainable. Who says that Apollo 11 didn’t land in Google Africa? Can’t you read a map?

Images: Google Earth (Data SIO, NOAA, U.S. Navy, NGA, GEBCO, Image Landsat, LDEO-Columbia, NSF, NOAA)

Resolution Frontiers (still frame)
Image: Google Earth
Resolution Frontiers (still frame)
Image: Google Earth
Resolution Frontiers (still frame)
Image: Google Earth