February 4, 2010

The Everchanging Dutch Camo Landscape

Gather ye screengrabs while ye may, I guess.

The camo-obscuring of sensitive sites on Google Maps by the Dutch Intelligence Service (MVID) is a dynamic process. One of my favorite sites I found last November is a complex along the Maas in Rotterdam. The polygonal camo zone is surrounded by an equally artificial-looking geometric landscape:

rotterdam_camo_before.jpg

But when I pulled up that old post, the embedded Google Map showed a new, unobscured image:

rotterdam_camo_after.jpg

Thereby revealing the existence of a previously classified football field.

But wait, the image isn't unobscured after all; it's just obscured at a higher resolution. Oh no! It's Dutch Camo 2.0!

rotterdam_camo_v20.jpg

My project just got overlaid with a thick, historicizing blanket of obsolescence. Which, for a bunch of Dutch landscape paintings, is probably just as well.

And I must say, I DO like what they've done to that helipad-equipped grid.

rotterdam_camo_v20_grid.jpg

art | google | projects | posted by greg at February 4, 2010 8:58 AM