2019

Nauru: A Digital Voyage

The island of Nauru, as seen and unseen through the gaze of Google Street View. 

“Through the lens of Google Street View, this piece embarks on a digital voyage to the remote South Pacific island of Nauru.

As a machine for observation, Google Street View offers us a seductive, omnipotent and spectacular view of the world. We begin with the aerial godly perspective, and zoom in, leaping closer and closer until we are suddenly sucked through a pixelated wormhole and emerge, standing perfectly still, gazing upon the scene at eye level. 

Google Street View does not merely expand our visibility beyond thresholds once impossible to cross. In its encounter with Nauru, Street View also confronts us with a new type of digital boundary, which is as optical as it is political.”

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