Vittoria Di Palma Zoom.Pdf

122 Chapter 12 2 3 4 5 6 7 Zoom 8 9 Google Earth and Global 10 1 2 Intimacy 3 4 Vittoria Di Palma 522 6 7 8 By the help of our modern knowledge we may imagine the approach 9 to the earth as it would appear to one of us if he were permitted to 20 fly like Raphael through inter-stellar space. It would first become 1 visible as a mere point of light, then as a remote planet appears to 2 us; after that it would shine and dazzle like Venus; then we should 3 begin to see its geography as we do that of the moon; and at last, 4 when we come within three terrestrial diameters, or about twenty 5 thousand miles, we should distinguish the white icy poles, the vast 6 blue oceans, the continents and larger islands glistening like gold in 7 the sunshine, and the silver-bright wandering fields of cloud. Nearer 8 still, we should see the fresh green of Britain and Ireland, the dark 9 greens of Norwegian and Siberian forests, the greyer and browner 302 hues of countries parched by the sun, the shining courses of the 1 great rivers. All this would be intensely, inconceivably interesting; it 2 would be an unparalleled experience in the study of physical 3 geography, but it would not yet be landscape. On a still nearer 4 approach we should see the earth as from a balloon, and the land 5 would seem to hollow itself beneath us like a great round dish, but 6 the hills would be scarcely perceptible. We should still say, ‘It is not 7 landscape yet.’ At length, after touching the solid earth, and looking 8 round us, and seeing trees near us, fields spread out before, and 9 blue hills far away, we should say, ‘This, at last, is landscape. It is 40 not the world as the angels may see it from the midst of space, but 1 as men see it who dwell in it, and cultivate it, and love it. 2 Philip Gilbert Hamerton, Landscape (1885)1 239 Vittoria Di Palma In June 2005, Google launched its ‘3-D interface to the planet’, Google Earth. With Google Earth, users can fly from Ohio to Oman, Belgrade to Beijing, inaugurating an era of virtual tourism that has, in its turn, spawned unaffiliated websites such as Google Sightseeing (motto: ‘why bother seeing the earth for real?’), which steers viewers toward particularly interesting or noteworthy views such as the ‘Top 10 Naked People on Google Earth’.2 The program also enables its users to view the earth at multiple scales: you can survey the planet from outer space, or see the roof of your own house, zooming from global to local with a few clicks of the mouse. Embedded in its layers are additional levels of information: lists of restaurants and cultural centres, local crime statistics, or accounts of eye-witness sightings of extraterrestrials, which attempt to supplement the global tourist’s aerial view with ‘eyes on the ground’. Google Earth was an instant success; today it is used by millions worldwide. This extraordinary popularity is not only a result of Google Earth’s accessibility – it’s easy to use and a basic version can be downloaded for free – but also because of its propensity to tap into deeply rooted and widely held fantasies of unfettered vision. Offering users the ability to pan across and zoom down onto almost any geographical location, Google Earth seems to offer unrestricted visual access to any spot on the globe. More than a digitized globe, and much more than a map, Google Earth has been called a social phenomenon. Google Earth, as a computer program, is a tool that can be used in numerous ways, both professionally, by teachers, geographers, politicians, archaeologists, lawyers or paparazzi, and recreationally, by a wider public. The visual and textual information it contains can be deployed to various ends, both ameliorative and nefarious: to argue for or against political or environ- mental action, to build a criminal case defending or indicting a suspect, to find the locations of neighbourhood schools and parks where children gather. However, although a great deal of information is available on Google Earth, an even greater amount is not. For example, the degree of visual resolution of major cities varies widely, with the greatest amount of coverage, unsurprisingly, concentrated on cities in North America and Western Europe. Furthermore, Google Earth’s visual configuration brings with it both possibilities and limitations. The program enables users to view cities, regions and landscapes from above, but not, at the present time, from ground level.3 In other words, Google Earth’s rendition of our planet is fundamentally conditioned by parameters inherent in the aerial view. Furthermore, its gravity-defying simulation of accelerated flight not only alters geographical relations of time and distance, but also constructs a viewer whose desire for speed, accessibility and incorporeality seem presupposed, a viewer who seems to be modelled after a disembodied eye in flight. This model has a history, as well 240 Zoom 122 as characteristics that are specific to the medium in which it has been realized. 2 An extended analysis would take into account both the continuities and 3 changes subsumed by this model, excavating a viewer who is defined by 4 particular representational conventions as well as conditioned by historically 5 determined aesthetic interpretations. This chapter attempts to uncover the 6 parameters defining Google Earth’s construction of its viewers, and, 7 consequently, what kind of global understanding is generated by the program’s 8 construction of the planet we inhabit: in other words, what it might mean to 9 be citizens of the imagined community of Google Earth.4 10 1 Google Earth’s digitized globe is pieced together out of a vast number of aerial 2 photographs, obtained from both satellites and lower-flying planes. Its digital 3 simulations are a ‘mosaic’ of millions of photographic ‘tiles’, which are both 4 stitched together horizontally and layered vertically.5 They present the earth as 522 it looks from above, allowing users to zoom in close to ground level and rise 6 to about 39,000 miles above the surface. The satellite photos used by Google 7 Earth come primarily from DigitalGlobe, a private company, whose satellite 8 QuickBird was launched in October 2001. Equipped with a camera and seven 9 years’ worth of fuel, QuickBird will continue to orbit the earth, at a distance of 20 450 kilometres, until its fuel runs out, capturing 75 million square kilometres 1 of the earth’s surface each year. By the time the photographs appear on 2 Google Earth, they are typically anywhere between one and three years old, 3 and are conditioned by the fact that QuickBird is programmed to chase the 4 sun so that its position always coincides with a uniform local time down on 5 the earth below.6 On Google Earth, it is usually 3 o’clock in the afternoon 6 on a sunny day. 7 In order to generate a map out of these millions of individual images, 8 7 9 Google Earth uses the General Perspective Projection. This projection enables 302 cartographers to transfer geographical information from a three-dimensional 1 object, such as a globe, to a two-dimensional surface such as a sheet of 2 paper or a screen; to do so, it utilizes a point of perspective located at a fixed 8 3 but distant position. Although the General Perspective Projection can be 4 traced back to Ptolemy’s Geographia of the second century CE, it was not until 5 recently, when the use of satellite imagery by mapmakers became widespread, 6 that the projection began to attract considered attention.9 Photographs of the 7 earth from above, whether captured by spacecraft, satellite, or airplane, have 8 a General Perspective Projection, which can be either vertical or tilted, depend- 9 ing on the position of the camera. Google Earth’s virtual map, made up of both 40 satellite and aerial views, thus incorporates both vertical and tilted General 1 Perspective Projections. 2 241 Vittoria Di Palma The assumption of a located but distant observer is fundamental to both the General Perspective Projection and the aerial view. An aerial view has always been available to anyone willing to climb a hill or a tower, but it is Petrarch who has traditionally been identified as the first author to have recorded scaling a mountain simply because he wished ‘to see what so great an elevation had to offer’: his ascent of Mount Ventoux marks a turning point because of its predominantly visual motivation.10 Representations of such vistas – bird’s-eye views that have an elevated and oblique perspective and an extended scope – include both landscapes that have actually been seen and those (such as Jacopo de’ Barbari’s famous bird’s-eye view of Venice of 1500) that are principally artistic constructs. However, the experience of flight – attainable, for the first time, with the invention of the hot air balloon in 1783 by the Mongolfier brothers – offered a perspective distinctly different from an elevated though earthbound one.11 This novel airborne point of view was first successfully photographed in 1858 by Nadar, whose balloon excursions over Paris resulted in a visual chronicle of the city’s transformation under Haussmann: aerial photography and urban representation were joined from the very start.12 In the early years of photography, cameras were attached to all sorts of flying objects – kites, balloons – and sent up into the air to record and bring back images, but the invention of the airplane provided aerial photography with an ideal vehicle.

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