Lost

A recent Herald article reports the curious case of islands disappearing with significant political implications, a tale that Cleo Paskal also tells in her new book, Global Warming: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.

Exhibit A is Bermeja, supposed to be HERE but mysteriously missing since 1997, potentially affecting where Mexico can set its 200 nautical-mile economic zone from.

Exhibit B is New Moore Island, or South Talpatti to those in Bangladesh, who claim it belongs to them and not to India. (If you do a search for New Moore Island on Google Maps, you get no results but a suggestion that you're looking for "New Moore Island, Bangladesh", seemingly indicating Google's political preference.) It is still marked on the map HERE, where a blue smudgey area suggests that it has been airbrushed out, although this may also be from the added resolution in this spot due to the attention it has received.

Although Bermeja and New Moore are unoccupied and purely of geo-political interest, they set interesting precedents for other island nations, including TUVALU, KIRIBATI and the MALDIVES, whose occupants may need to be resettled if their homes also disappear.

Image: An 1846 map showing the Mexican island of Bermeja

Doctoring time

Fans of Dr Who spin-off Torchwood (we've just finished the second series on DVD) will immediately recognise THIS view of central Cardiff, which plays a prominent role in the series. Cardiff, so the story goes, is in the middle of a rift in space and time and the Torchwood hub, where they deal with rift anomalies, is based underneath the Millennium Plaza (pictured). One episode has them rescuing a warehouse-scale alien meatloaf (built by Barney (son of Wystan) Curnow). Jumping into STREETVIEW, you're practically on location, waiting for Captain Jack to pop up out of the pavement.

Speaking of enormous alien structures, we've just discovered THIS DOOZY just a little north in Birmingham, designed by Future Systems, who are also responsible for the Lord's Media Centre, found HERE.

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart

The strange representations of reality found on google earth (and maps) got even weirder a few years ago when they launched Street View, adding another layer of time slippage and weird glitches to an already complex landscape. Just over a year ago, Google's army of camera cars trawled the streets of New Zealand and we've been fascinated ever since. Whereas once it was cool just being able to zoom in on the roof of your house, or check out nearby swimming pools, now you can check out cats or catch people doing dodgy things. Naturally, suspicious country folk and those wearing tin-foil hats got nervous.

Our latest discovery is then phenomenon of cloaked cameras. You haven't travelled until you've driven the streets of Alaska inside a PLASTIC BAG. Or whatever THIS ONE is.

So there's plenty of fun to be had with Street View, but we never expected to find this.

It seems, when he's not helping Yoshimi battle pink robots from space or spending Christmas on Mars, our favourite musical cosmonaut, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, likes to hang out in a bath tub out front of his Oklahoma home. Seriously though (not really), it's a bizarre installation Coyne and partner Michelle created for Halloween 2007, just in time for a visit from Google's roving camera. You can see it for yourself HERE (notice how it disappears when you take a jump to the RIGHT?).

The Zero Island

Via the Starkwhite Blog, we discover the Cactus Dome of Enewetak Atoll, a cracked concrete cap more than 100m across, covering a radioactive dump left after US nuclear testing in the Pacific Proving Ground. The dome fills a crater left HERE by the 'Cactus' blast, preceded by 'Ivy Mike''s world-first test of a hydrogen bomb in 1952 as part of Operation Ivy, which completely atomised the island of Elugelab, leaving a 2km-wide hole HERE.

"What you have just seen was an awesome turning point in history..."


Image: Ivy Mike makes the cover of Life, found here.

Remap Berlin

"Remap Berlin spreads a thin geographical virus in Google Earth and deals with different levels of reality. The project introduces a series of b&w photographs shot in Twinity, a mirror world that reproduces a realistic 3D replica of Berlin. The photos shot in Twinity, are then geo-localized in Google maps, re-mapped from virtual to real and positioned in the exact point where they have been shot in the mirror world. Once uploaded in the photo sharing community Panoramio, the pictures are mixed up with other ones shot in the same geographical point from real life users. Many of these pictures have been selected by Google and can now be found as “Popular photos in Google Earth”: his became a little geographical virus, parts of our memories of the real world. The photographs are cityscapes, shot by Marco Manray roaming around the still empty streets of Berlin in the beta version."

Internet landscape photographer Marco Manray's Remap Berlin project is currently featured at Window.

Image: Leipziger Platz, found here and HERE

Stack

Last week Australian sound artist and writer Ros Bandt was in Auckland for a symposium on ElectroAcoustic music, held by The University of Auckland. Although we have had her book on Australian sound sculpture for a number of years, it was great to finally meet her.

After our chance encounter, she kindly left us with Stack, a CD of "original sonic explorations of a major new urban tower, an ephemeral acoustic space in the development of the City of Melbourne... Bandt brings to life the inner and outer sonic possibilities gleaned from the massive city stac, a 55-metre chimney designed to extract fumes from the new CityLink tunnel in the heart of Melbourne's underground." The resonant space recorded by Bandt was effectively lost when the tunnel was opened, silenced by traffic and the roar of extrator fans.

Many readers will recognise Stack's site as being alongside the infamous yellow peril, outside ACCA. From ABOVE, we can almost look right down the vent. STREET VIEW allows us to look back up at the exterior towering above us from the ground. And HERE you can drive right through the aforementioned tunnel. Nice!

Image: Ros Bandt records with the stack, photo by Arthur McDevitt.

Motor City is crumbling

The industrial heart of Detroit has become a ghost town, according to a recent photo essay in Time Magazine (thanks SH). Images include the grand MICHIGAN CENTRAL STATION, derelict for more than 20 years; The FISHER BODY PLANT, producer of Buick and Cadillac bodies, abandoned in 1991 but still home to some floor sculpture; and what must be the grandest car park we've seen, the former MICHIGAN THEATRE within the MICHIGAN BUILDING, apparently built on the site Henry Ford built his first car.

Looking around, Henry seems to have his NAME written all over this town. THIS lot full of rusting iron frames is quite a sight. Heading west from the city you find the Ford plant, and nearby Zug Island and surrounds has some DRAMATIC AND INTRIGUING scenes. We wonder how life COMPARES across the river in Canada?

Image: Fisher Body Plant #21, Interior, including artwork by Scott Hocking. (Sean Hemmerle)

Making your mark

A couple of interesting things we found this week: Real Google Map markers (thanks ADA/LM); and the following call for participation.

QUERY in situ and online art project
http://www.query-online.net/

DATES:start for Application: August 20th, 2009

in situ project in Munich: September 12th, 2009

BACKGROUND: This project consists of two parts. Part 1. An installation in Public Space in Munich, Germany taking place in September 2009. This part is a prelude to the online project. Google Maps will be taken from the virtual into real space: big balloons, shaped like Google marks, floating above two churches in Munich (St. Anna -christian and St. Lukas - evangelic), visible day and night, with questionmarks/querys on them. Part 2. takes place in Internet and is meant as an open art project and discussion platform.

It's unlikely but would be great if both real-space manifestations found their way back into the virtual map.

On the QUERY website, we recommend going to the FAQs for a 90second summary of 5000 years of religious development and geographic expansion.

How low can you go

Recent adventures had us primed for an exploration of the world's tallest towers but we couldn't resist a little more spelunking. A recent email (thanks again, JR) introduced us to Guatemala's 330-ft deep GIANT SINKHOLE (described here and here). And then we found our work had been done for us, thanks to this handy list of Large Holes by Virtual Tourism, which we will shamelessly borrow from:

MIRNY DIAMOND MINE, Siberia is the largest open diamond mine in the world and is visible from an extraordinarily high altitude.

KIMBERLEY Big Hole, South Africa is apparently the largest ever hand-dug excavation in the world.

This grainy VIEW doesn't offer much so we'll have to take their word for it that Belize has one of the better Blue Holes (image above). The deepest is Dean's BLUE HOLE, nearby in the Bahamas.

The Monticello Dam's GLORY HOLE spillway is used to drain the reservoir when the dam is at full capacity and creates an impressive negative space within a negative volume.

Lastly, we'll stop at the inverted mountain of BINGHAM CANYON MINE, Utah, begun in 1863 and supposedly the largest man-made excavation on earth. It has plenty of the classic MOTIFS we've admired before and, seemingly occupying two time zones, a nice dusting of SNOW at one end. Being in familiar SPIRAL JETTY territory, we thought we'd have a look around the Great Lake and found no shortage of salty eyecandy, including HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Secret smile

Here's another one from a reader: Flying over Taipei, home to well manicured PARKS, GARDENS AND MEMORIALS, interesting INDUSTRIAL and RESIDENTIAL configurations, swimming POOLS, monumental TOWERS, car PARKS, and other things we enjoy, it seems there are a FEW places that need to be HIDDEN from view. (Thanks JR)

Image: The sinister smile of the secret 'clownface' organisation's HQ

Tunnel Vision

"[Ralph] Hotere was sitting beside the train driver, staring straight ahead as the train hurtled through the landscape then vanished into the blackness of the first tunnel. Then, just as suddenly, theywere catapulted back into blinding light. Then they hit another tunnel. As the artist described this journey he closed his hand when he mentioned the darkness of the tunnel then his fist sprang open when he mentioned daylight. [...] This sporadic immersion in darkness is what makes the visible world come alive, what makes it vivid and even profound; just as the stretch of daylight is necessary for the darkness of the tunnel to work its inverse magic."

Gregory O'Brien recalls Ralph Hotere sitting up front from Dunedin to Palmerston in After Bathing at Baxter's, 2002.

All this talk in the news of potential tunnels in Auckland reminded us of the extraordinary effect created when trying to navigate through Mt Victoria TUNNEL in Wellington using Street View, a curious phenomenon brought to our attention in the comments of Public Address. It's a bit like flying through the intro sequence of Dr Who.

Art From Space has long been interested in finding ways to unfold the 2-dimensional upper surface facade of the map; to somehow burrow within the information, breaking into the matrix, if you will. So our latest addiction is spelunking through the entrances and exits of the world's subterranean roads. Starting local, here are BOTH ENDS of the Lyttelton tunnel, including Peter Beaven's iconic toll BUILDING featured in Long Live the Modern.

With a little help from Wikipedia, here is a quick tour of the world's road tunnels. With six lanes and a good collection of popular culture cameo parts, HERE is the Lincoln Tunnel, which runs under the Hudson river to connect New Jersey with Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Le Tunnel Sous la manche, or the CHANNEL TUNNEL, has the longest underwater section but no street view yet. Unfortunately there is also no street view or enough resolution to sight the architecture and sculpture that heralds your entry into the Mont Blanc Tunnel, providing a trans-alpine route between Italy and France. At 24.5km, the longest is Norway's Lærdal Tunnel, although there is very little MAP VIEWING yet but we look forward to seeing the sequence of caves added especially to keep drivers amused and alert. One of the longest in Asia is the Hsuehshan Tunnel, which runs from HERE to HERE and has its own FM radio station. Opened in 1897, London's Blackwall Tunnel displaced more than 600 houses, including an alleged former home of Sir Walter Raleigh, and has several sharp bends, apparently included either to keep horses from bolting when they re-encountered direct light, or to avoid tunneling through black death burial grounds. Starting from BLACKWALL (where the ROOFS are impressively landscaped) it brings you out near the MILLENNIUM Dome HERE.

Speaking of tunnelling to the millennium, we would reminisce for a bit about watching Irwin (The Swarm) Allen's The Time Tunnel but a lack of age would make that a fabrication. But we are rather fond of the literary wormhole (wordhole?) Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries have created between North and South Korea. The border town of Pal-Pan Dong is presumably just an artful figment , although it is hard to tell with so little of Korea (North and South) marked on google maps. They have info on the DMZ bus tour here (it takes a while) and here, or you can cruise the BORDER yourself, noting what are presumably military installations all the way along and looking for tunnels.

Within the DMZ you will find just two villages, Daeseong-dong on the South side HERE, and the allegedly uninhabited Kijong-dong in the North HERE, with lights turning on and off but nobody home, and sporting the world's tallest flagpole. As has been reported in the LA Times, google maps has done wonders for opening up North Korea to virtual tourism - bring on the duty free.

Image: The HOLLAND TUNNEL entrance, close cousin to the Lincoln, features on the cover of Yo La Tengo's 1997 album, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One.

Mind the Gap

“[These works] capture western capitalism on the grandest scale; the landscape seen from outer space. The landscape from this perspective is slightly mysterious. Describe circular irrigation to most people and they will immediately recall the kind of crop circles depicted in extraterrestrial movies and conspiracy theories. There is usually a ready explanation to this kind of enigma: in the instance of circular irrigation it is purely the pattern created by irrigation sprinklers which enables these abstract and slightly haphazardly constructed landscapes.

“[Adrian] Jackman has worked from public domain satellite imagery in Google Maps. The quality and amount of visual information available varies considerably in this popular web application, enticing the imagination to postulate on unseen spaces. This is of course a technical constraint of the photograph but one that does not exist in painting. For the painter, this lack of visual information represents an opportunity: to capture the available information and successfully fill in the gaps.

“Gaps have at one time or another invoked imaginative responses in us all. Whether it be cracks in the pavement or the narrow spaces between domestic decking floorboards. In this new series Jackman has witnessed gaps in the landscape, constructing a collection of intriging new compositions that are certain to strike an imaginative chord with his audience.”

Matt Blomely on Adrian Jackman's exhibition Mind the Gap at Lopdell House.

Image: Adrian Jackman, The Agrarians, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 1220 x 1524mm

Here today...

Until midnight tonight a giant LED clock will count through 1440 minutes to re-activate the ALBERT PARK ROTUNDA as a site of activism and free speech. This is Bik Van Der Pol's contribution to the One Day Sculpture series. Given the inherently temporal nature of this project, it doesn't naturally lend itself to the slow-release mapping we usually concern ourselves with here. However, many of these sorts of works leave a long-term residue, either physical or conceptual, that shifts the way we view a site thereafter. Henry Moore's BRONZE SCULPTURE in Wellington, perhaps the antithesis of all this temporal activity, will forever appear compromised as a result of One Day Sculpture, unless the Wellington City Council and Wellington Sculpture Trust decide to accept Billy Apple's proposition, at which point the sculpture will begin to undergo a long-term physical transformation.

Throughout the ODS Symposium there were a few works that were repeatedly invoked as reference points. As evidence of the continued influence of Rosalind Krauss' Sculpture in the Expanded Field, we revisited SPIRAL JETTY and also the disappearance of Tilted Arc. The favoured recent examples that kept cropping up were Francis Alys' When Faith Moves Mountains and Javier Tellez's One Flew Over the Void (Bala Perdida). Like many of these works, Tellez utilises tension from an existing sculptural structure, in this case the West Coast end of the U.S-Mexico BORDER FENCE. Alys recruited 500 volunteers to move by four inches one of the giant sand dunes of VENTILLA near Lima as an act of deromanticising land art for the land-less. In a similarly anti-monumental gesture resulting in more vanishing earth works, in 2007 gelitin spent seven days on CONEY ISLAND BEACH digging holes and filling them in again.

Abandoned

With our running interest in hidden places, negative spaces, voids and other types of monumental emptiness, we couldn't resist this post on WebUrbanist, which we have managed to mostly translate into map locations (and more deserted cities here).

Hong Kong's once anarchic Kowloon Walled City was torn down not long after Jackie Chan used it as a set for Crime Story, including real footage of exploding buildings. Before demolition, Japanese explorers spent a week mapping the vacated site. It is NOW A PARK.

The RYUGYONG HOTEL casts a long shadow over Pyongyang, a towering memorial to failure.

Our favourite is the mysterious and futuristic UFO ghost city of SAN ZHI, Taiwan, which sadly disappeared only a few months ago.

Once the capital of Azerbaijan, AGDAM's crumbling mosques demonstrate that living at the crossroads can have a negative effect, which can leave you in the middle of contested territory just as it can also make you a centre for commerce. Then there are the built open spaces of the city of FATEHPUR SIKRI, Uttar Pradesh, India, which was the capital of the Mughal Empire but is said to have been abandoned since the 16th century when it ran out of water only decades after being built.

Unfortunately the map resolution is not great but here is the former splendor of BOKOR HILL STATION in Phnom Bokor, Cambodia.

Closed in 1999 after a single accident, Opko Land in South Korea is still a mostly intact amusement park, although google has been very slow to add maps and detail to most of Korea so THIS is as close as we get. A shame because we like amusements parks and promise to seek out a few more, abandoned or operating, at a later date.

Image: The UFO house in Sanjhih, taken by cypherone

Tremors

"Theo Schoon, the Dutch artist, introduced me to the geothermal areas of the central North Island - areas to which I have returned many times to record on film the detail and drama of these fascinating places. Here at your feet and in the air you breathe are the feverish exhalations of volcanic activity. These sites are the art galleries of nature's creations, thrust to the surface from subterranean crucibles by steam, boiling water and gases."

Len Castle quoted by Peter Simpson in the Mountain to the Sea exhibition catalogue.

Last week, amidst some of the steamiest weather Auckland has experienced in recent times, Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery curator Tanya Wilkinson opened a touring exhibition of Len Castle's geologically inspired ceramics, combined with photographs by the artist and a selection of commissioned poetry, all of which makes for a nice publication.

Amongst those places favoured by Castle and simmering with primeval forces is the volcanic heart of the North Island around Tongariro, which includes the CRATER LAKE of Mount Ruapehu, the UPPER and LOWER TAMA lakes with their wind-swept, bottle-glass surfaces, and the seemingly kiln-fired, peak of NGAURUHOE, adorned with jewel-like lake glazes HERE, HERE and HERE.

Heading north from the super-sized crater lake of Taupo are the geothermal facilities at WAIRAKEI, the many small lakes through the region, including ROTOKAWA, TIKITAPU with its strange digital surface patterning, the pale blue and strikingly titled Echo Lake (WHANGIOTERANGI) alongside the emerald green Ngakoro, and of course the bubbling mud of WAIOTAPU and WHAKAREWAREWA in ROTORUA. And then, out to sea, it is hard to miss the miles-long plume of White Island (WHAKAARI).

Speaking of smoking peaks, here's MOUNT SAINT HELENS, VESUVIUS, KRAKATOA and ETNA. Not to forget the regularly erupting island of STROMBOLI, site of a movie starring Ingrid Bergman as a frustrated new bride. This in turn inspired Woody Guthrie to write a great piece of bawdy verse in which he longed for the perty actress to make his mountain quiver, a song that went unrecorded until Billy Bragg and Wilco were allowed through the late folkster's notebooks.

Image: Len Castle, Tongariro Emerald Lake

Chute

In our last tour of New Zealand's hydro facilities it seems we missed an important one. Fortunately Peter Peryer, whose use of a blog to reveal the day-to-day influences on his practice is well worth a subscription, has been keeping a close eye on the CLUTHA RIVER. He reports that the dam now has surplus storage and, indeed, it does look like we've gone from a serious low to a significant high since alarm bells were ringing last winter.

We're envious of the remarkable landscapes, cloud formations and earthworks he has snapped while on residency in Otago and during frequent trips north. Here is his Three Sisters in Tongaporutu, reduced to just a pair for a while but now featuring a new sibling. Unfortunately the coast is shrouded in cloud so we can't see exactly which incarnation lives on the GOOGLE MAP.

Air travel appears to be an occasional recurring theme of Peryer's and he has even snapped the elusive B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber, which has invisibility powers that seem to even keep it clear of map sitings. A number of people have documented finding them HERE at Edwards Air Force Base, halfway between Lancaster and Littlerock. Similarly, there were a lot of documented sitings of one left on the tarmac HERE at Northrop Grumman, and most of the fleet of 20 are said to reside HERE at Whiteman Air Force Base, but in all three cases someone has done a very good job of spiriting (airbrushing) them out of view. There is apparently one parked inside a hangar at the National Museum of the US Air Force, although a good gathering of vintage craft can be seen outside HERE. In the middle of the Indian Ocean on the controversially depopulated Diego Garcia atoll, which contributes to GPS data, you can see HERE the portable climate-controlled bubbles they are kept in. But our favourite siting, also at Edwards AFB, has to be this bomber-shaped garden over HERE.

Images: Peter Peryer's Sluice Gate Number 1 at Roxburgh (above) and our own version (below), one of NZ's Top 10 modernist structures according to Docomomo.

Colour fields

Since an online visit to Monet's garden, we have been keeping an eye out for visible sunflower fields, blurry haystacks, poppies, or any other plantation bringing a splash of colour to the satellite landscapes. So far, although our efforts have hardly been persistent, there has been little success. However, an actual drive through the real terrain of West Auckland a few days ago, taking the scenic route home to avoid an accident on THE BRIDGE, led us to this industrial ROSE GARDEN with its softly dappled pink and blue smudges - and an excellent light-flare off a greenhouse roof. Jumping into street view, we couldn't help admiring the spectacular FUNNEL OF CLOUD caught in the sunset.

It seems to be a garden summer with the Auckland Art Gallery opening a delightfully electic (eccentric?) exhibition, The Enchanted Garden, not long after former gallery director Christopher Johnstone launched his own book on gardens in New Zealand art. Of the many delights unearthed from the collection vaults by curator Mary Kisler, there is one of the gallery's six views of MALTA's impressively terraced fortifications painted by Alberto Pulicino while still occupied by the 'Knights of Malta'.

Of particular interest in Johnstone's book is the early depiction of now long-gone homes, and their surrounding grounds, in what have mostly became dense, urban areas. Of these historic garden estates, a few survive, including Sir George Gray's mansion at KAWAU (depicted by Alfred Sharpe and Constance Cumming) and ST JOHN'S COLLEGE in Auckland (depicted by John Kinder) retains many early features. It is interesting to note that the extensive plantings Colin McCahon (and family) made and painted at their Titirangi house were probably influenced by time he spent working as a gardener at the WELLINGTON BOTANICAL GARDENS. Jumping back into STREET VIEW, we can almost replicate his works depicting the Titirangi House through the trees.

Leigh Martin, best known for abstract work, is included for his floral 'noise' paintings. Whilst studying in Glasgow, Martin is said to have spent much time in the local Botanic Gardens, including KIBBLE PALACE and particularly the NZ flora section. He also met the late Derek Jarman, whose shingle garden at PROSPECT COTTAGE near Dungeness (also home to a nuclear POWER STATION, an excellent set of sound mirrors, and is an important ecological site) is well known, and just as striking to the ear (audio here) as to the eye.

Image: One of many images of Derek Jarman's Garden available on flickr and similar websites.

Wild Bill in Cloudland

Painter Bill Hammond's 1989 visit to the Auckland Islands has become somewhat of an apocryphal story, which we are told resulted in the brooding bird paintings that followed. What little most of know of this forsaken place are the hallucinatory images Hammond has fed into our imaginations. It is shrouded in further mystery from the fact that Hammond, who does not do interviews, has never spoken publically of his experience there. Photographer Laurence Aberhart was on that same expedition and last year added to the legend in the Jingle Jangle Morning exhibition catalogue with the tale of a long, cold night on Enderby Island, holed up in car cases and being entertained at "Bill's Bar". To conclude the catalogue's written section, there are two nocturnal photographs by Lloyd Godman, also on that trip along with Gerda Leenards, of a possessed-looking Hammond stalking through a Rata forest - these photos are now on show in the Auckland Art Gallery's Enchanted Garden exhibition.

But what is the reality of this mythical, far-off bird-land? Even a search on google maps sheds little light, with none of these subantarctic islands yet being marked. With some guidance from a traditional atlas, the ISLANDS are easily found and, at first appearance, present a primal view of the chiselled, craggy landforms on which shipwrecked castaways have often had to survive. Wikipedia tells us the MOSTLY uninhabited islands form the southern-most edge of the submerged continent Zealandia and are formed from volcanoes, with the main strait that is the hub of the southern end being the crater of an extinct volcano.

Zooming in, the crater seems completely shrouded in shadow and cloud, until one seemingly bursts through to a CLEAR VIEW of grey, icy waters and bare hills. Up on Enderby, you can almost smell the salt air as rows of Hokusai-waves queue to crash over CRAGGY ROCKS encrusted with dribbling layers guanno. Off the west coast is the evocatively named DISAPPOINTMENT ISLAND, which sits within a blurred circle of digital void, much like the time warp which has carvedthe island's NORTH-WEST TIP into several overlapping temporal zones.

Nearby Macquarie Island is not only draped in cloud from LONG-RANGE, it is completely LOST from the map, forcing you to drive blind until you get into close-range. At its northern tip a striking HORIZON LINE is formed at the point where the map disappears back into cyberspace.

Image: Cover of F.E. Raynal's Wrecked on a Reef, a tale of shipwreck on the Auckland Islands

Here we give thanks...

The vast icy terrain of Greenland appears to be google's biggest blindspot and is punctuated with curious artefacts where indistinguishable bits of map have presumably been stitched together. This glimpse of MARTIAN landscape is certainly intriguing but, at 40km in length, it is this metaphysical GATE that is most striking. But should we attribute it to McCahon, Mondrian or Malevich? Kubrick? (Thanks AS)

Dead Seas

I noticed this massive earth work in the background of a music video and, with the help of the clip's maker, managed to locate it on the map. Looking like a koru expansion of Spiral Jetty and remarkably visible from a long way up, HERE are the pink ponds of the Dominion Salt Works at Lake Grassmere, also known as Kaparatehau (wind-blown lake) - some fantastic images here.

Even more impressive are the enormous salt ponds of the Dead Sea, which are well worth SCOUTING AROUND for strange shapes, structures and textures. Note the backbone formed by the Israel-Jordan border, which runs right up the middle of the sea, where you'll find this brilliant STATIC effect just before resolution cuts out.

Wikipedia tells us that the Dead Sea is only the second saltiest body of water on earth, after the CRATER LAKE of Assal, which boasts some impressive volcanic landscapes but none are yet visible at any useful proximity via by google's satellites. Frank Zappa fans may find the location familiar as potentially being the country from which his brilliantly titled Sheik Yerbouti album takes its name.

Image: Lake Grassmere salt farm, taken by Mike Harre