Digital Earth

The launch of Vertical Atlas marks the conclusion of an extraordinary journey for Digital Earth. After five years of organizing fellowships, research labs, exhibitions and symposia on digital futures, we are closing the program and look forward to embarking on new paths.

We are extremely grateful for the incredible support from our inspiring fellows, partners, studio advisors, consultants, lecturers and editors, from our team, our donors and loyal followers. We look back at the amazing work we did together virtually and in Amsterdam, Beirut, Dakar, Dubai, Harare, Moscow, New Delhi, Paris, and Rotterdam.

Our colleagues at Hivos will continue supporting artists and creatives through the R.O.O.M. program which will have a Pan-African focus. Check hivos.org to stay up to date about future opportunities in 2023 and beyond.

Both websites digitalearth.art and verticalatlas.net will remain online. If you want to share some thoughts drop us a line at [email protected].

Be well and hopefully our paths will cross again in the future.

With gratitude,

The Digital Earth team

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Image: Katja Novitskova. Approximation (eyes of the world), 2021.

How do we represent digital narratives? Katja Novitskova delves into our relationship with technology, and the stories we tell with and about it. Approximation (eyes of the world) is a visual representation of the way in which algorithms process the world. The software that Novitskova used for this is based on the work of the mathematician Alan Turing, who in the previous century tried to use mathematical formulas to fathom biological patterns.

Discover more in Vertical Atlas, print and pdf available via the link in bio 🔗

Imaginary architectural spaces functioning as interfaces to consumerism can be modeled, rendered, animated, and experienced. 𝘈𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘺 presents a cityscape of real and proposed skyscrapers and landmarks from all of the Gulf cities combined into one skyline. As Gulf cities continue to grow and expand, the focus is on desire rather than practical urban problem-solving. New satellite cities and mega-projects are planned and announced so often that the idea of the future is a constant render and marketing campaign.

Scroll through the full cityscape in the hi-res pdf of Vertical Atlas 🔗

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Images: GCC Group. Amalgamated City, 2013.

The Internet, which the first non-military users perceived and shaped as the utopian universal space, has limits. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘵 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘳 by Guo Cheng sheds light on one of the highest walls of the Internet: the Great Firewall of China (GFW). In his project, Cheng examines the virtual borders China has erected to safeguard its cyber sovereignty. Certain foreign websites are blocked, and cross-border communication is slowed down. In 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘦𝘵 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘳 Cheng assumes the role of a ‘firewall tourist’ who visits the invisible websites that host the GFW’s network infrastructures.

Explore this contribution in full in Vertical Atlas, head to the link in bio 📒

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Images: Guo Cheng. The Net Wanderer - A Tour of Suspended Handshakes, 2019 - ongoing

For Dan Zhu working with pencil and paint on paper or linen is the beauty of necessity, the wonder of medium, there since the explosion of space itself. Circle after circle, round after round, the hour glass is turning.

With Eyeballs, Windows and Mussels, Zhu implicitly asks the question how cosmoslogy is embedded in daily life. How can imagination shape a liveable digital future?

Zoom in on this work in Vertical Atlas, head to the link in bio to download the book for free!

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Image: Dan Zhu. Eyeballs, Windows and Mussels. 2020.

People in Lubumbashi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have been waiting for Hercules to come and restore to them the wealth of their land. But Hercules doesn’t come. Rather than pin their hopes on a Greek myth, Mokha and Rediger inquire if they can resort to music and a heroic dance to obtain justice and re-appropriate the resources? Freely inspired by Georg Frideric Handel's Hercules' Choice, Dorine Mokha and Swiss composer Elia Rediger created a post-documentary oratorio for eleven musicians from Europe and the Congo, a dancer and a singer. It addresses the increasing demand for cobalt, the exploitation by multinationals and the destruction of the living space of local populations.

𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘦 𝘓𝘶𝘣𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘪 is part of the contribution by On-Trade-Off, an artist collective striving to counter extractivist structures and speculate on possible alternative scenarios for mutual accounting on an interdependent planet, to open ideas beyond the protective localism of wealthy ecological policies, and the structural racism of global techno-capitalism. – On-Trade-Off

Discover more work from On-Trade-Off in Vertical Atlas, download Vertical Atlas via the link in bio!

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Image: Dorine Mokha and Elia Rediger. Hercule de Lubumbashi, 2019. Still.

“Here on these ancient salt flats, sacred mountains stand guard over a landscape charged with electric potential. A new future awaits. This landscape is central to the culture and mythology of the indigenous Aymara* people, and it’s pregnant with billion-dollar prospects. This ethereal place is set to become the feeding ground of a global green-energy revolution.

The drive for small and powerful batteries has rendered this landscape one of the most sought after on earth. Buried here is a grey gold called lithium–the power in our pockets. It’s fundamental to the charging and recharging of millions of gleaming electronic devices, and it’s the future of electric cars.

Half the world’s reserves lie dissolved in brine beneath this salt crust, untapped, and for the people of the Bolivian Altiplano its extraction brings with it unanswered questions of land ownership, resource royalties and environmental impacts. [...]” – Unknown Fields

Read 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘬 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘰𝘭𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘰 in Vertical Atlas, head to the link in bio to download the free pdf!

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All images: Unknown Fields

“A new form of extractivism defines life in the 21st Century. It is one that reaches into the furthest corners of the biosphere and the deepest layers of human cognitive and affective being: the stack that underpins contemporary technological systems goes well beyond the multi-layered ‘technical stack’ of data modeling, hardware, servers, and networks. Today’s full stack reaches into capital, labor, and nature, while demanding an enormous amount from each.

𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘌𝘹𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘈𝘯 𝘈𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘖𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘴 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘈𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 gathers together different concepts and images of the new extractivism, proposing a semi coherent picture of the full stack. The concepts that it presents are mostly represented in the form of visual allegories. Dictionaries define allegory as a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one. All of these allegories and concepts gathered here add up to a blueprint—for a machine-like superstructure; a super allegory that encompasses the whole world. What we have here is an almost fractal allegorical structure—an allegory within an allegory within an allegory…“ – Vladan Joler

Read the full article in Vertical Atlas, head to the link in bio to download the free pdf!

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All images: Vladan Joler. New Extractivism An Assemblage Of Concepts And Allegories, 2020.

🖼️If you’re in Rotterdam this week be sure to check the Vertical Atlas Exhibition until November 27th. With work from Kévin Bray, Geocinema (Asia Bazdyrieva and Solveig Qu Suess), Isaac Kariuki, Francois Knoetze, Emo de Medeiros, Andrej Škufca, Suzanne Treister, and Qiu Zhijie.

On view is Making of Earths, which explores Geocinema’s ‘planetary’ notion of cinema. The film traces current efforts made across China and South East Asia, to predict the future of Earth’s increasingly strange climates, in the shadow of ever more control on land.

All images: Making of Earths, Geocinema 2021.

“The representational aspiration of the aerial image was insignificant in comparison to its ideological pursuits; the bird’s-eye view paved the way for a Eurocentric world order where avian landscapes were methodically examined through the scientific framing of ornithology and the production of visual empirical data. While aerial imaging tools strived to reproduce the bird’s perspective through machinic vision, new scopic regimes ultimately reflected the imagination of the architects; their entanglements with the history of colonialism made them anything but objective. Avian archives and collections came to represent imperial worldviews that contributed to the strategic erasure of local inhabitants and their indigenous knowledge.”

In the article ‘Avian Taxonomies And The Aerial Panopticon’ Heba Y. Amin investigates earth observation technologies, their colonial frameworks and subsequent political ramifications.

The publication is freely accessible to download via the link in bio 🔗





Image 1: Heba Y. Amin, The General's Stork I, 2020. 100 x 80.86 cm, archival color print. Courtesy of the artist.

Image 2: Heba Y. Amin, Artistic collage of Pfeilstorch, 2020. (documented at the University of Rostock by Markus Rack).

Image 3: Heba Y. Amin, Artistic rendering of first aerial photographs of Palestine (ca. 1900-20), Jordan Valley north of Jericho, 1500m, 2020. Courtesy of the artist. (ref. Matson G. Eric and Edith Photograph Collection).

Image 4: Heba Y. Amin, Artistic rendering of first aerial photographs of Palestine (ca. 1900-20), Jordan Valley north of Jericho, 1500m, 2020. Courtesy of the artist. (ref. Matson G. Eric and Edith Photograph Collection).

Image 5: Heba Y. Amin, As Birds Flying, 2016. 7'11" Video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Open now: Vertical Atlas Exhibition Gallery 3 Rotterdam. The exhibition will be up until November 27th so be sure to check it out while you still can!

The exhibition features work from Kévin Bray, Geocinema (Asia Bazdyrieva and Solveig Qu Suess), Isaac Kariuki, Francois Knoetze, Emo de Medeiros, Andrej Škufca, Suzanne Treister and Qiu Zhijie

📒 While you’re in the building visit NAi Booksellers () where you can pick up a copy of the Vertical Atlas publication
knoetze .jpg .demedeiros.5 .skufca

Photography:

The Vertical Atlas team would like to extend a huge 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 to everyone who made last weeks event possible. We had a fantastic evening celebrating the launch of with you all.

🌐 The online publication is now live and freely accessible to explore from your devices.

📒 Get your hands on a beautifully printed book via ArtEZPress webshop or via your local bookstore.

🖼️ Visit the Vertical Atlas exhibition Het Nieuwe Instituut on Tuesday - Sunday from 10am - 5pm until November 27th.

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Photography: Aad Hoogendoorn ()

The Vertical Atlas publication is officially launched! The book is now on sale at ArtEZ Press webshop (https://artezpress.artez.nl/en/books/vertical-atlas/).

Pick up your copy NAi Booksellers or via your local bookstore.

The free online publication is live at: https://verticalatlas.net/