Curatorial Projects > Here Be Dragons: Mapping Information and Imagination (2011-12)

Jenny Odell
All the People on Google Earth (All the People on Baker Beach) (left), 2011
All the People on Google Earth (All the People in Dolores Park) (center), 2011
All the People on Google Earth (All the People on Pier 39) (right), 2011
Digital print

“All the People on Google Earth is an ongoing series of modified snapshots of crowds I find on Google Earth, where everything but the people (and their blankets, umbrellas, dogs, etc.) has been removed. Given the current limitations of resolution on Google Earth, I can only use imagery from the handful of places where angled imagery is available at the most zoomed-in level. The angle reveals each person's shadow, which is often the only thing that identifies a particular shape as a person at all. We may occasionally see a leg thrust out in the act of walking; there are suggestions of tennis-playing movements. Otherwise these people exist on the very limit of the recognizable, anonymous and dissolved into pixels.” – Jenny Odell

Here Be Dragons: Mapping Information and Imagination

October 21, 2011 – January 14, 2012
Intersection for the Arts
San Francisco, CA

Photo credit: Scott Chernis