I have for many years been interested in Panoramas and Digital processing, so naturally I’m drawn to the work of other artists who operate in this area. In this connection I would like to highlight the work of Michael Aschauer and his ongoing body of work, River Studies. In his experimental cartography, Michael asked the question “What if you could pull rivers into straight lines?” … and this was the thing that really drew my attention. In my own practice, I have of course been taking straight lines and making them once again into curvy lines. So, as a nod of appreciation to Michael, I have reconfigued one of his Aerial views into a spiral. I hope that this arrangement offers an interesting temporal remix of the original map data. This particular image is an adaptation of Michael’s work with the Yangtze River. You can see more of Michael’s work on his Website and in this lovely PDF Booklet.
When I reached out to Michael, the spiral form reminded him of the Last Clock by Jussi Ängeslevä. In the spirit of mapping texture onto any path, he also pointed me in the direction of he Hershey Vector Fonts, which are apparently an important part of Computing History. Let’s see where this goes next!
