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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Best of Luck with the Wall
Josh Begley
Original: 15.tif | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: 01.tif | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: 04.tif | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: 05.tif | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: 08.tif | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: Best of Luck with the Wall | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: Best of Luck with the Wall | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
Original: Best of Luck with the Wall | 1080 * 600px | 1.9 MB
A voyage across the US-Mexico border, stitched together from 200,000 satellite images.
What does the southern border of the United States look like? For all the talk of “securing the border” and “building a wall,” there is surprisingly little visual material that conveys just how vast this stretch of space is. In total, the US-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles. According to Google Maps, it would take 34 hours to drive its entire length. In some places, there already is a border fence - more than 650 miles of it. Pushed and pulled by various forces, some 1 million people are estimated to cross the border every day.
But what does the geography of this landscape look like? Is it industrial? Desolate? Populated? All of the above?
Using the geographic coordinates of the international boundary line, in addition to location data for the existing border fence, I wrote a small computer script to download satellite imagery for the entire stretch of space. I ended up with about 200,000 images. Using a command-line tool called ffmpeg, I programmatically stitched the images together, and then worked with Laura Poitras and her team at Field of Vision to edit them into a short film. Jace Clayton, the artist and author known as DJ /rupture, developed an original score for the piece.
The southern border is a space that has been almost entirely reduced to metaphor. It is not even a geography. Part of my intention with this film is to *insist* on that geography. By focusing on the physical landscape, I hope viewers might gain a sense of the enormity of it all, and perhaps imagine what it would mean to be a political subject of that terrain.
Links: https://vimeo.com/189004719, https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/best-of-luck-with-the-wall/
What does the southern border of the United States look like? For all the talk of “securing the border” and “building a wall,” there is surprisingly little visual material that conveys just how vast this stretch of space is. In total, the US-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles. According to Google Maps, it would take 34 hours to drive its entire length. In some places, there already is a border fence - more than 650 miles of it. Pushed and pulled by various forces, some 1 million people are estimated to cross the border every day.
But what does the geography of this landscape look like? Is it industrial? Desolate? Populated? All of the above?
Using the geographic coordinates of the international boundary line, in addition to location data for the existing border fence, I wrote a small computer script to download satellite imagery for the entire stretch of space. I ended up with about 200,000 images. Using a command-line tool called ffmpeg, I programmatically stitched the images together, and then worked with Laura Poitras and her team at Field of Vision to edit them into a short film. Jace Clayton, the artist and author known as DJ /rupture, developed an original score for the piece.
The southern border is a space that has been almost entirely reduced to metaphor. It is not even a geography. Part of my intention with this film is to *insist* on that geography. By focusing on the physical landscape, I hope viewers might gain a sense of the enormity of it all, and perhaps imagine what it would mean to be a political subject of that terrain.
Links: https://vimeo.com/189004719, https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/best-of-luck-with-the-wall/
Director: Josh Begley
Executive Producer: Laura Poitras
Score: Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture)
Executive Producer: Laura Poitras
Score: Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture)
Josh Begley (US), born in 1984, is a data artist and app developer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the creator of Metadata+, an iPhone app that tracks US drone strikes. Appropriating publicly available satellite imagery, Begley's work takes advantage of application programming interfaces, or APIs, to build collections of machine-generated images about quotidian life. His work has appeared in *Wired*, *The New York Times*, *NPR*, *The Atlantic*, *The Guardian*, *New York* magazine, and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Begley holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and New York University. He currently works at *The Intercept,* a publication of First Look Media.