With the array of scientific and cartographic data made increasingly available through the public domain, our collective vision has expanded. The immediacy of digital technologies allows us to enter a remote landscape many miles, sometimes even light-years away, while physically remaining at home. Using information accessed through open-source media, such as Google Earth, United States National Park video feeds, and NASA satellite imagery, the work in The View from Above/Below alludes to our desire to extend our own vision, proposing new perspectives for viewing place and space.

Carla Fisher Schwartz’s work draws upon a practice of virtual exploration in Google Earth, culling street-level views that exploit technical glitches in the service’s 3D modeled map. Drawn from an ongoing collection of scenic compositions found within the map, the work catalogs natural forms as pictured through the simulated environment, with frequent visual dysfunctions often exposing the underlying framework of the virtual representation.