Clement Valla has a unique collection. While searching Google Earth, the artist found some strange results of Google’s Universal Texture algorithm. Valla’s entire collection is titled “Postcards from Google Earth.”
"I discovered strange moments where the illusion of a seamless representation of the Earth’s surface seems to break down," Valla says. "At first, I thought they were glitches, or errors in the algorithm."
Most of the images are made up of bridges that appear to be drooping - a road that crosses the area near the Niagara Falls appears to drop right off the face of a cliff, hover over the water and curve back up an impossible incline to right itself on the other side.
"These jarring moments expose how Google Earth works, focusing our attention on the software," Valla says. "...Google Earth is a database disguised as a photographic representation. These uncanny images focus our attention on that process itself, and the network of algorithms, computers, storage systems, automated cameras, maps, pilots, engineers, photographers, surveyors and map-makers that generate them."
The phenomenon has to do with the technology called texture mapping. A flat image is stretched over a 3-D model like skin. Google uses its own patent called The Universal Texture to put a skin on its own 3-D model of the Earth, and the photos it uses come from a variety of sources including satellite images. It makes my brain overheat thinking about it, but you can find more details about how all this works at Valla's The Universal Texture post.
I hear Google is working on a fix to correct the drooping bridge issue, but in the meanwhile I think it's amazing that someone is capturing these images. To me it shows the world is as much art as science, and numbers and technology are still a long ways from catching up to showing how we experience the world.
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