Skip to search
Skip to main content
Catalog
Help
Feedback
Your Account
Library Account
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Search History
Search in
Keyword
Title (keyword)
Author (keyword)
Subject (keyword)
Title starts with
Subject (browse)
Author (browse)
Author (sorted by title)
Call number (browse)
search for
Search
Advanced Search
Bookmarks
(
0
)
Princeton University Library Catalog
Start over
Cite
Send
to
SMS
Email
EndNote
RefWorks
RIS
Printer
Bookmark
Close up at a distance : mapping, technology, and politics / Laura Kurgan.
Author
Kurgan, Laura
[Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/Created
Brooklyn, NY : Zone Books, 2013.
Description
1 online resource (228 pages) : illustrations, maps.
Availability
Available Online
JSTOR DDA
Online Content
Copies in the Library
Location
Call Number
Status
Location Service
Notes
Architecture Library - Stacks
G70.4 .K87 2013
Browse related items
Request
Details
Subject(s)
Satellite image maps
[Browse]
Remote-sensing images
—
Political aspects
[Browse]
Global Positioning System
—
Social aspects
[Browse]
Aerial photography
[Browse]
Medium/Support
polychrome. rdacc http://rdaregistry.info/termList/RDAColourContent/1003
Summary note
"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 satellite 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 realization. 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 theorizes 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 politics 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 recording of information and data and reimagines the spaces they have opened up."--Pub. desc.
"The maps in this book are drawn with satellites, assembled with pixels radioed from outer space, and constructed from statistics; they record situations of intense conflict and express fundamental transformations in our ways of seeing and of experiencing space. These maps are built with Global Positioning Systems (GPS), remote sensing satellites, or Geographic Information Systems (GIS): digital spatial hardware and software designed for such military and governmental uses as reconnaissance, secrecy, monitoring, ballistics, the census, and national security. Rather than shying away from the politics and complexities of their intended uses, in Close Up at a Distance Laura Kurgan attempts to illuminate them. Poised at the intersection of art, architecture, activism, and geography, her analysis uncovers the implicit biases of the new views, the means of recording information they present, and the new spaces they have opened up. Her presentation of these maps reclaims, repurposes, and discovers new and even inadvertent uses for them, including documentary, memorial, preservation, interpretation, political, or simply aesthetic. GPS has been available to both civilians and the military since 1991; the World Wide Web democratized the distribution of data in 1992; Google Earth has captured global bird's-eye views since 2005. Technology has brought about a revolutionary shift in our ability to navigate, inhabit, and define the spatial realm. The traces of interactions, both physical and virtual, charted by the maps in Close Up at a Distance define this shift."
Bibliographic references
Includes bibliographical references.
Source of description
Print version record.
Contents
Mapping considered as a problem of theory and practice
Representation and the necessity of interpretation
From military surveillance to the public sphere
You are here
Kuwait : image mapping
Cape Town, South Africa, 1968 : search or surveillance?
Kosovo 1999 : SPOT 083-264
New York, September 11, 2001
Around ground zero
Monochrome landscapes
Global clock
Million-dollar blocks.
Show 9 more Contents items
ISBN
9781935408413 ((electronic bk.))
1935408410 ((electronic bk.))
OCLC
828868953
Other standard number
40022039234
Statement on language in description
Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage.
Read more...
Other views
Staff view
Ask a Question
Suggest a Correction
Report Harmful Language
Supplementary Information