Bridges; Clement Valla, 2010

Most people have whiled away a few hours scouring the globe from above using Google Earth. However, when artist and programmer Clement Valla started thinking about how the software operates, he found images which made even the most familiar landmarks unrecognisable. 
"I began exploring areas where it would be difficult to resolve the two different media [of satellite imaging and 3D landscape] and found that bridges produced very interesting result," the Brooklyn-based artist explains. 

Indeed, it is the mix of inspiration and scepticism that Google Earth stirs in Valla which provides the concept behind his "postcards". Like many others, he first used Google Earth "out of curiosity", but while admiring it as a piece of software, Valla likes "to maintain a critical distance to these kinds of representations, trying to understand how they affect the way in which we see and interpret the world,  the way in which they affect other visual representations, and might one day replace other modes of exploring the planet."

This led to Googling the world's "tallest, longest, newest, most spectacular bridges", as well as spending hours just following roads on the satellite imaging software looking for glitches. Valla's work is a self-proclaimed "investigation of process" and the reasons behind the images' wonky perspectives are as interesting as how they came to be so. Because, while Valla's images may look processed they're actually just screenshots from Google Earth. He explains that because the Google Earth image is produced by mapping a flat, 2D satellite image image onto the 3D terrain model information, the flat image -- for example of the top of the Golden Gate Bridge -- is projected onto the terrain beneath it, the result is distortion. Or, "in other words, the bridge appears to follow the terrain that it actually goes over".

The images are further complicated by the deceptive shadowing from the satellite images. As Valla says in an interview with Wired.co.uk, "These create depth cues, so we can understand the 3D information contained in 2D images."

Valla calls these images postcards because of how they reflect the transient nature of satellite imaging. "They reflect another era, another mode of exploration, discovery and memory, another process of image creation and distribution" he explains.

"These images are frozen moments from the history of Google Earth. As the software improves and is updated, these situations may be resolved, and these images will disappear forever from the software."
That would mean losing these weird and wonderful anomalous warped bridges. It's a good job we've got a gallery full of Valla's hunted-down screengrabs for you here.

Mr John Holten sent me this.
More images here.