Map Kaleidoscope

July 30, 2011 10:37 AM

Rorschmap slices and reflects images from Google Maps, creating kaleidoscopic cartography.

Rorschmap is cartographic navel-gazing, a reframing of the map. It will not help you find anything. We are bored with your squares and your margins. We want new shapes and new dimensions, the unicode snowmen of visual representation. … Rorschmap should work on most modern browsers. Safari and Chrome are better than Firefox. I don’t know about Windows machines. It is optimised for iPad, and looks rather good there.

Canberra, Australia
Vancouver, Canada
Amsterdam, Netherlands

posted by zamboni (19 comments total)

Unfortunately, the search box seems to be broken at the moment.
posted by zamboni at 10:41 AM on July 30, 2011

By James Bridle, who's other stuff is well worth looking at.
posted by johnny novak at 10:43 AM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Edinburgh
posted by Lanark at 10:47 AM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

DC doesn't look any different.
posted by elektrotechnicus at 10:54 AM on July 30, 2011 [5 favorites]

Unfortunately, the search box seems to be broken at the moment.

I think you just have to click the Go button rather than pressing enter.
posted by jessssse at 10:57 AM on July 30, 2011

We live in such an interesting age. This is brilliant and lovely.
posted by Sreiny at 11:41 AM on July 30, 2011

Kaleidoscope with maps?
posted by Cranberry at 12:11 PM on July 30, 2011

Maps? All I see is penises. Oh wait, I mean all I see is a pretty butterfly.
posted by Nelson at 12:18 PM on July 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

Wow, thank you. This is great.
posted by mdonley at 12:49 PM on July 30, 2011

These are mostly more kaleidoscopey than rorschachish -- except for Madison, WI.
posted by dhartung at 1:29 PM on July 30, 2011

This is really good, and not just because of it's toy-like novelty. I had a weird moment after I realized that I was basically using it to create an ideal version of the city I live in, which becomes kind of fraught when you realize that you're doing so by means of putting the parts that aren't included in that vision out of the frame.
posted by invitapriore at 2:43 PM on July 30, 2011

Also the various absurdities of such literal and large-scale symmetry that follow from pretending that these images represent real cities makes this one of the best works in the Invisible Cities-type tradition that I have seen in a while. I'm in love with this. Thank you.
posted by invitapriore at 2:47 PM on July 30, 2011

I love that of the dozen or so times I clicked the "random" button (and got land rather than sea), none of those locations was in North American or Europe.
posted by nev at 3:02 PM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Very cool. This guy was doing something similar several years ago.
posted by gwint at 6:31 PM on July 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

Some kind of glitch just happened, and the map hit a blank grey area and the grey swallowed all of the land. That was really kind of messed up.

*goes to bed, has nightmares*
posted by joannemerriam at 8:15 PM on July 30, 2011

Vatican
Yokohama,Japan
Machu Picchu, Peru

Ok, this is fun.
posted by eye of newt at 8:48 PM on July 30, 2011

Wait, they all look like Edinburgh. That can't be right.
Let's try again.

Vatican
Yokohama, Japan
Machu Picchu, Peru
posted by eye of newt at 8:52 PM on July 30, 2011

Really cool.
posted by threeants at 10:38 PM on July 30, 2011

I want this on my iPad, and I want it now.

Love it. Thank you.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:25 AM on July 31, 2011