Of all the things Google Earth has done for the planet, it's contribution to art is due a bit of credit. There's been candid street view snaps, interactive mirrored maps and people who comb the globe looking for glitches. The beautiful thing about it all is a sense of non-ownership, of using this collection of readily available, public imagery to create work that steals from the collective visual language - resulting in this an archive of stuff that all looks oh-so-similar, oh-so-familiar, and yet wholly strange, unique and not quite of this world.
David Thomas Smith pulls together thousands of jpegs to produce these ridiculously intricate large-scale photographs. (I recommend going to his site for a proper look, these highly compressed versions hardly do justice to the originals.)
And while he notes Persian and Afghan rug design has influenced their look, he ultimately sums up his inspiration as "too much time on the internet". Well, if this is what endless idle hours online looks like then I'm not complaining.
And while he notes Persian and Afghan rug design has influenced their look, he ultimately sums up his inspiration as "too much time on the internet". Well, if this is what endless idle hours online looks like then I'm not complaining.
How many more ways can we rearrange the Google Earth library? We'll wait and see.
David's website here.
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