The Google World Wonders Project
"From the archaeological areas of Pompeii to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, Google’s World Wonders Project aims to bring to life the wonders of the modern and ancient world.
By using our Street View technology, Google has a unique opportunity to make world heritage sites available to users across the globe. Street View is a hugely popular feature of Google Maps which is already available in dozens of countries. It allows users to virtually explore and navigate a neighborhood through panoramic street-level images. With advancements in our camera technologies we can now go off the beaten track to photograph some of the most significant places in the world so that anyone, anywhere can explore them.
Street View has already proved a real hit for tourists and avid virtual explorers. The World Wonders Project also presents a valuable resource for students and scholars who can now virtually discover some of the most famous sites on earth. The project offers an innovative way to teach history and geography to students all over the world.
Our World Wonders Project is also supported by a broad, connected suite of other Google technologies, bringing wonders of the world within reach of an unprecedented global audience. The project website also provides a window to 3D models, YouTube videos and photography of the famous heritage sites.
Together with partners including UNESCO, the World Monuments Fund and Cyark, the World Wonders Project is preserving the world heritage sites for future generations."
(Google Inc., 31 May 2012)
Fig.1 Published on 19 Mar 2012 by "worldwonders".
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Einstein’s Brain Project: revealing the constructed nature of immersive virtual reality
"If there is a single general expectation of the recent advances in the technologies of virtual reality and hyper-interactive simulation it is that of its capacity to present an ever-increasing realism. The quest for seamlessly reproduced worlds is paramount in the military and institutional development of the simulation technologies. The ideal (achievable or otherwise) of immersive virtual reality consists of surrounding an individual with images, sounds and behaviours so apparently like those of the real world that the body and consequently the brain is fooled into thinking it is in that world. These developing strategies are those of realism rid of expression, symbol or metaphor and they are sustained by the authorities of homogeneity and seamlessness. Just as long rendering times and their outcome of low frame rates are constantly, and expensively, fought against because they disturb the seamlessness and the effectiveness of the illusion so ruptures in the content and the consumption of the worlds are discouraged. Stopping to consider the strangeness of a sound distorted by being played too slowly or the flickering or jerkiness of an image disrupts our sense of ourselves as being in normal relations with a world. Similarly the consideration of a subtext or a hidden meaning draws attention to our consideration and away from the construction and sustenance of our normal relationship to the world. One must see these contemporary desires as linked to a history of naturalism, its concurrent dualistic pairing of reality and appearance and the authority and correctness of institutional space."
(Alan Dunning, Paul Woodrow, Morley Hollenberg)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Weltkartensammlung (collection Of Historical World Maps)
Tedo Tavkhelidse
Die erste Karte, die Amerika nach Amerigo Vespucci benennt. Diese wichtige Karte umfaßt die Revolution der Geographie, die den Entdeckungsreisen der Seefahrer folgte.
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
Whole World In A Cloverleaf
"Heinrich Bunting (1545-1606) knew the world didn't really look like this. There are enough maps in his works (such as Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae) to indicate he knew the continents had an irregular, and not a symbolic shape.
The map shows a world divided into three parts (Europe, Asia and Africa), connected at a single central point: Jerusalem.This is essentially still the same symbolic map of the world as the one first devised by Saint Isidore in the seventh century. Isidore's 'T and O'-shaped map, itself inspired by Scripture, influenced Christian European mapmaking up until the age of discovery.
Some named countries and places (not all are easily readable) on the three continents are, left to right:
* Europe: Hispanien (Spain), Mailand (Milan), Welschland (Welsh? Walloon? Country), Frankreich (France), Lothringen (Lorraine), Roma (Rome), Deutschland (Germany), Ungarn (Hungary), Polen (Poland), Preussen (Prussia), Griechenland (Greece), Türken (Turks)
* Africa: Lybia, Egypten, Morenland (Land of the Moors), Königreich Melinde (Kingdom of Melinde) , Caput Bonae Spes (Cape of Good Hope)
* Asia: Siria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Chaldea, Persia, India"
(anonymous, Strange Maps)
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
World: Enclosed And Recursive
"World is one of my recent projects exploring aspects of enclosed and recursive worlds. The inspiration for the project draws on the design of: orreries; Ptolemic science; dreams of flying and the work of Constantin Brancusi."
(Andy Love)
CONTRIBUTOR
Andy LoveSHARE
