'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 satellites 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 realisation. 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 theorises 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 political 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 recordings of information and data and reimagines the spaces they have opened up.' (Front book flap) 

Access level

Onsite

author
Location code
REF.KUL
Keyword
Publication/Creation date

2013

No of pages

232

ISBN / ISSN

9781935408284

No of copies

1

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction

Mapping Considered as Problem of Theory and Practice

Representation and the Necessity of Interpretation

Lexicon

From Military Survelliance to the Public Sphere

Projects

You Are Here

Kuwait: Image Mapping

Cape Town, South Africa, 1968: Search or Survelliance?

Kosovo 1999: SPOT 083-264

New York, September 11, 2001

Around Ground Zero

Monochrome Landscapes

Global Clock

Million-Dollar Blocks

Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics
Share
Citation
Rights statement

In Copyright

What does this mean?

This item is covered by one or more copyrights. It is available for research only or use within Hong Kong’s fair dealing rules. Please do not copy, re-use or reproduce this item without the permission of the copyright holder.

Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics