Throughout time, mapping the Earth hasn’t simply been an effort to accurately model the planet, but to define reality. Behind the great cartographers have stood monarchs, republics, emperors, sultanates, and even corporations like the Dutch East Indies Company. A range of entities have dictated maps’ purposes, edited their features, and created political boundaries.
Adam Lowe and Jerry Brotton of Factum Arte, an art and technology collective, take quite a different tack to map-making. In their ongoing cartographic art project Terra Forming: Engineering the Sublime, Factum Arte creates 3-D relief models of five maps of Earth and flood them. Designed to provoke discussions about climate change, human (or animal) migration, and other pressing issues, Terra Forming grew out of an exhibition Lowe and Brotton curated for the Fondazione Giorgio Cini’s exhibition on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore. (The Fondazione Giorgio Cini, located in Venice, Italy, is a center that conducts climate change research.)
While on San Giorgio Maggiore, Brotton and Lowe noticed how parts of the island were reclaimed from the lagoon in the second half of the 20th century. After talking about their long-term shared interest in cartography and maps, the two hit upon the idea of making a topographic and bathymetric (underwater depth) relief map of the Earth without water—a map the size of a soccer field.
“It grew from there to a desire to create a spectacle that visually re-staged an epic flood,” Lowe explained. “When we built a model,
Article source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3058667/these-artists-flood-3-d-maps-of-earth-to-simulate-the-effects-of-climate-change
