Off the Grid in Durham, NC

Google Earth: Mapping an Alternative Durham

The goal of this project is to subject the program GoogleEarth to critical analysis by putting it into relation with the theoretical discourses informing contemporary cartography and New Media. Our principle questions deal with the ways in which the phenomenon of the web-based virtual map affects current theorizations of space, subjectivity, and representation. What is a virtual map? What are the politics of mapping in a situation where Internet users have the ability to determine content? What encounters with the city are made possible using this new technology? Are there any potential encounters that it makes less accessible? What does it mean that the Google Corporation is the proprietor of this software? Informing these theoretical and political concerns is an actual engagement with Google Earth, constructing a map with the tools made available by the program. We chose to focus on Durham, North Carolina, an area belonging to the Triangle of cities (Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill) presently experiencing rapid levels of capitalist development. Within Durham, these developments are in gravitational orbit around two centers: Duke University and Research Triangle Park. Considering the power of these sites to determine ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ by organizing construction, public policy, traffic patterns, and the entire psychogeographical landscape around themselves and their professional employees, we wanted to further an alternative mapping project by highlighting spots in the city that suggest different organizations of space, time, and experience.

Taking our inspiration from the Situationist theory of the derive, this involved neither a chance or habit-driven stroll nor a pre-planned charting of the terrain. We could not rely on there being a single terrain to chart, nor could we rely on any one mode of investigation. We were forced to realize that Durham’s diffuse urban environment and the dynamics of the Internet which mediated both our mapping and our research necessitated the use of automobile, web search engine, digital photography, and foot travel for nearly every location. It became obvious to us that every space is multiple, and that this has powerful implications for any new urbanism. Working within the terms and tools of the Google Earth interface, we have identified several “layers” that comprise our alternative cityscape: community, food, education, art, small business (used and handicraft goods), and green space. These we have populated with images, critical analyses, and phenomenological impressions, in the interest of demonstrating the expansion of the urban environment into its media representations, such that the map is a part of the city. In some sense its extension, but one that is always imbricated within a physical space and its preexisting codes of social organization (property, function, advertising). Our project concludes with a consideration of the aesthetics of Google Earth, a new aesthetics of mapping that simultaneously functions as a prototype for a digital urbanism.

Our KMZ file can be downloaded here. We will be steadily uploading these sites to the Google Earth community layer.

Klarr’s photos, awaiting approval for inclusion on the main visual layer of Google Earth are here.

traxus4420’s photos are here.