Dec 17, 2015
Where “google cars” have no access or have simply no reason to go, Google map is using a 3D generator software to build up street views and 3d landscapes. This is the case of Malta, where no photographic street-views are available for now. The software is just processing two areal photos and reconstructs a 3D image out of them. This is similar to the process constantly made by our eyes and brain. It's well known in fact how we don't see with our eyes, but with our brain, that constantly reformulates data coming form our eyes, in order to reconstruct reality and make sense of it. A good proof of it are optical illusions, just bugs in our interpretative system. And exactly as for our brain, even in the google reconstructions illusions and mistakes take place; misinterpretations of shadows mostly in the google case, generating some pseudo “expressionists” landscapes. I wanted to compare a series of those google reproductions with the ones I made with my camera. Both google 3d and photography are representations, but which one is closer to reality? The answer is probably less obvious than what it could seem: The photographic image is a reproduction of the image, just a trace of the light generated and reflected by an object and the result is very similar to what we see. The google image is a reproduction of a system of understanding and reconstruct of reality, very similar to the process we adopt ourselves to see what we see. If photography is the reproduction of an image, than google 3D is the reproduction of how we create and see that image. If photography imitates our eye then google imitates our brain. Then to answer the question “which reproduction is closer to reality” we first should clarify what we intend by “reality”, and how close to it we can go. If the answer (as it seems) is that the reality we can possibly access is just the one processed and interpreted by our brain, than the truer reproduction is the one imitating our interpretation system, more than a reproduction of the image as a mere trace of light. Therefore, although photographic images seems more similar to what we see, free of any odd misinterpretations (not being capable to interpret at all), precisely in those mistakes and oddities it becomes evident the similarity to the interpretative mediation that constantly separates us form the reality out and within ourselves.
