Close Up at a Distance
eBook - PDF

Close Up at a Distance

Mapping, Technology, and Politics

  1. 232 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Close Up at a Distance

Mapping, Technology, and Politics

About this book

The past two decades have seen revolutionary shifts in our ability to navigate, inhabit, and define the spatial realm. The data flows that condition much of our lives now regularly include Global Positioning System (GPS) readings and satellite images of a quality once reserved for a few militaries and intelligence agencies, and powerful geographic information system (GIS) software is now commonplace. These new technologies have raised fundamental questions about the intersection between physical space and its representation, virtual space and its realization.

In Close Up at a Distance, Laura Kurgan offers a theoretical account of these new digital technologies of location and a series of practical experiments in making maps and images with spatial data. Neither simply useful tools nor objects of wonder or anxiety, the technologies of GPS, GIS, and satellite imagery become, in this book, the subject and the medium of a critical exploration.

Close Up at a Distance records situations of intense conflict and struggle, on the one hand, and fundamental transformations in our ways of seeing and of experiencing space, on the other. Kurgan maps and theorizes mass graves, incarceration patterns, disappearing forests, and currency flows in a series of cases that range from Kuwait (1991) to Kosovo (1999), New York (2001) to Indonesia (2010).

Using digital spatial hardware and software designed for military and governmental use in reconnaissance, secrecy, monitoring, ballistics, the census, and national security, Kurgan engages and confronts the politics and complexities of these technologies and their uses. At the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography, she uncovers, in her essays and projects, the opacities inherent in the recording of information and data and reimagines the spaces they have opened up.

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Yes, you can access Close Up at a Distance by Laura Kurgan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Urban Sociology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
SCATTER
Stationary
GPS
receiver,
roof
of
Museu
d’Art
Contemporani
de
Barcelona
Data:
442
raw
(uncorrected)
position
records
Acquired:
September
2,
1995,
10:09:51–10:19:52
gps
time
NAVSTAR
satellites:
15,
28,
21,
01
17m
0
52.6m
CORRECTION
Stationary
GPS
receiver,
roof
of
Museu
d’Art
Contemporani
de
Barcelona
Data:
442
position
records,
after
differential
correction
by
reference
to
base
station
at
Tortosa,
40°49’15.118”
n
,
0°29’23.494”
e
2.63m
13.88m
0
POINT
Within
three
to
five
meters
of
41°22’58.47”
n
,
2°09’58.60”
e
Data:
averaged
value
of
442
position
records,
after
differential
correction
5m
5m
0
DRIFT
Mobile
GPS
receiver,
moving
across
roof
of
Museu
d’Art
Contemporani
de
Barcelona
Data:
42
raw
(uncorrected)
position
records
Acquired:
September
2,
1995,
09:10:36–09:11:45
gps
time
NAVSTAR
satellites:
23,
28,
31,
15,
and
22,
23,
28,
15
75.72m
31.57m
0

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Introduction
  3. Lexicon
  4. Projects
  5. Chapter 1. You Are Here
  6. Chapter 2. Kuwait: Image Mapping
  7. Chapter 3. Cape Town, South Africa, 1968: Search or Surveillance?
  8. Chapter 4. Kosovo 1999: SPOT 083-264
  9. Chapter 5. New York, September 11, 2001
  10. Chapter 6. Around Ground Zero
  11. Chapter 7. Monochrome Landscapes
  12. Chapter 8. Global Clock
  13. Chapter 9. Million-Dollar Blocks
  14. Acknowledgments
  15. Exhibitions, Installations, Publications
  16. Notes