Terra Incognita
©2013
The central theme of my long-term project is the domestication of nature, exploring how this concept manifests in both exterior environments and our inner psychological spaces.
Historically, 'landscape' is not merely a view of nature, but a constructed concept born from the convergence of Renaissance painting and the dawn of industrialization. As such, a landscape represents an image of an idea—a declaration of what an 'ideal' world should look like, captured and reproduced through mediums like photography.
Today, electronic media have generated entirely new landscapes. Influenced by television, space flight, satellite imagery, and virtual digital technologies, these new forms mediate our contact with the physical world. They offer instantaneous access to information, accelerating our perception of time and shrinking spatial distances, often leading to a profound decontextualization of experience.
By utilizing Google Street View, I navigate these algorithmic spaces—virtual representations of our world that have never been seen before. In doing so, I simultaneously inhabit this mediated reality and construct my own new world within it.