THE RENDERING EYE
THE RENDERING EYE
CREDITS
Machines don’t see the way we do, that much is clear. In these urban, suburban and natural vistas taken from Apple Maps, which uses a form of 3D imaging, we see a visual representation of landscapes that’s far different from our own. Based on an incredible stream of photographic data generated by Apple’s cartography division, nicknamed Sputnik, they are based on fact yet feel false. Clumsy and inarticulate, with distorted lines and misunderstood representations of space, the images are bemusing in their misread of reality.
Swiss journalist, historian and documentary filmmaker Regula Bochsler (1958, Switzerland) took screen captures of this distorted, digitally mapped world, identifying also one of the more intriguing aspects about this moment in time: as advanced as the technology is, it simultaneously looks like it’s already obsolete. Essentially, it illustrates a way-point in development, the comically imperfect first steps of a new movement, soon to be replaced by something smoother. Focusing on scenes with a certain dark loneliness, offering urban landscapes emptied of their former occupants, Bochsler’s images point to the ultimate obsolescence of all things – our cities, all the things we make, even us.
