Yo

brynnshepherd:

Fascinated by the existence of “trap streets” and other cartographic glitches described in this article by James Bridle:

Such interventions are known colloquially as “trap streets,” a collective term for cartographic fictions with the intent to deter copyists. And, as noted, they may not all be streets: any geographic alteration can be used, from the fabrication of a remote nonexistent town to the mislabeling of the elevation of a mountain range. The existence of such doctored locations is routinely denied in public statements by publishers, even when acknowledged in closed legal proceedings, and so the Ordnance Survey’s denials should be viewed with a certain circumspection.

…And so what happens when these false places are overlaid on real ones through acquisition or aggregation or intention, algorithmic or otherwise? Ultimately, it is possible to peer through the layers of data and geography to see vistas that should not be possible. “The Sky on Trap Street” is a small online project collecting the views above trap streets in Google Maps. Using Google Street View, it is possible to find the closest real location to a trap street and look up at the correct angle to catch a glimpse of the sky—white fluffy clouds, slightly distorted, besmirched by JPEG artifacts like old salt-water stains—over an imaginary place. These places exist not as physical locations but as accumulations of data, of imagery, of files in file systems somewhere, accessible to the imagination if not to the pedestrian. What “The Sky on Trap Street” does is to hollow out a space for the imagination in a digital environment originally defined for legal, corporate purposes—a nonspace reverted to human use.


explodingdog:

Waiting for Godot