para ll e l lawrence bird
terms: artefacting : the generation of distortions in an image or sound especially through errors in reproduction. composited : speaks to the mosaic-like quality of the images, Google Earth and similar mapping systems. It’s not composed the way a painting is composed, rather it is collaged from different components. satellite tile : a generally square image of part of the earth which, with others, composes the overall image. Imagine the tiles as a pyramid - from one tile on top showing a large area, to (in several steps down) arrays of tiles each of which shows more detail about a smaller area.
para||e| is an evolving single channel video, harvesting satellite imagery from Google Earth as multiple sequential high-resolution images which are sorted and edited into a single seven-hour long aerial tracking. Audio is comprised of three superimposed tracks, all modified: found music, ambient sound from the International Space Station, and the sound of a border patrol MQ-9 Reaper drone. https://vimeo.com/64061190
This map is also characterised by the failure of its components to align. On close examination, this digital environment is full of contradictions and anomalies.
The 49th parallel determines 2000 kilometres of border between the United States and Canada from the Salish Sea to Lake of the Woods — a seemingly simple straight line and a significant portion of the longest undefended border in the world. A border is above else a representation: a mark on the ground and on a map that defines a political entity, often a cultural one also: who is on which side? how is that mark crossed? what is risked in crossing it? This project, para||e| , examines that representation as translated through another: Google’s three-dimensional mapping of the earth.
The odd, occasionally eerie, imagery resulting from technical errors in media is layered onto a long history of mistakes. The 49th parallel was always an arbitrary boundary. In the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 following the Louisiana Purchase of 1804, the border was defined as where the watershed of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers met the watersheds of the rivers that drained into Hudson’s Bay — a line in practical terms impossible to find. Impossible in theory too, without recourse to geometries developed by mathematicians such as Lewis Carrol later in the century. The 49th parallel was substituted for that watershed border.
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 2
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