Parallel Expedition

A simultaneous expedition to both the Geographic North and South Pole from my office desk.
Videoloop, 1920×1080, no sound, 4:56 minutes.

The expedition happened on 02.04.2012 at around 21:00.

The videoloop is a recording of a virtual parallel expedition to both the geographic north and south pole undertaken via the computer on my office desk. Being online not only gives me the feeling I can go anywhere in the world in the blink of the eye but it also creates the illusion of ubiquity, enabling me to be everywhere at the same time. Yet there is no location on the whole planet I spend more time in than in front of my screen, while the earth’s digital representation and the modes of interacting with it are far from perfect and focused on small, highly developed areas. When a Google Street View car for example drives by my house and digitizes the neigbourhood it draws heavily on pre-existing, localized infrastructural networks like roads, power grid, pipelines etc. which were all built by people spending big amounts of time on their construction and design. The internet itself in fact relies on these same infrastructures, a certainty which resurfaces into common perception every now and then an intercontinental deep sea cable is being damaged cutting off the internet connection of whole countries. So this illusion of ubiquity and losing yourself on the internet actually relies on physical objects and people being in exactly one certain place at a time.

“There is no cloud.” – Julian Oliver