Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics

by Laura Kurgan

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.

Genres: Politics, Technology, Design, Geography, Nonfiction, Architecture

228 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2013

Reviews

[Athena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reads a lot like an expanded exhibition catalog: each chapter focuses on one project from Laura Kurgan's work in mapping and data visualization over about two decades. Along with images from the projects, the chapters contain the original text displayed or distributed with them at museums as well as a preface by Kurgan reflecting on the project in 2012. It's not very heavy on analysis or theory, so heads-up: this book isn't too useful as a theoretical reference on space, mapping, and visual culture. That aside, Kurgan's work is an interesting take on how spatial analysis and ideas about spatial representation have changed since the early '90s, not just in the kinds of technologies available but in the kinds of questions researchers began to ask as they explored those technologies. One reviewer here noted that the book seems outdated, but actually I think that's one of its important aspects: it archives the history of a particular mode of analysis. This book would be of particular interest to people who work in the history of STS and anyone who works or wants to work with spatial analysis as a methodology for critical inquiry. Unfortunately, though, the book format predictably doesn't lend itself well to close examination of the projects themselves, which were often meant to be viewed at very large scale or in a more interactive way.

[Alyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I was expecting this book to be a broader look at the history and politics of satellite imagery. Instead, it's more like a series of case studies from the author's own museum installations. That said, there is some interesting history touched on in those case studies.

[Steve Baule · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book after reading a fascinating review about it in bookforum. This book is essentially collection of articles that spans 2 decades by the author. Most are interesting, but overall the articles feel dated. More discussion on the future and current mapping/geography trends would have freshened up the collection.

[ACRL]

Read by ACRL Member of the Week Shaun Akhtar. Learn more about Shaun on the ACRL Insider blog.