Seamless City

November 20, 2002 10:14 AM

Seamless City is a project made possible by proliferation of gigabytes of affordable disk space, digital cameras, photo composition applications, and a lot of time. Take a 30 mile pedestrian tour of San Francisco.
posted by mnology (8 comments total)

Corresponding news article here. With the availability and affordability of this technology, are there any other similar projects in different cities?
posted by mnology at 10:17 AM on November 20, 2002

mnology, since you asked - There is a similar project in Philadelphia, with a crucial difference: the emphasis is on capturing the cityscape as it exists on one day, going for quantity over quality (Seamless City definitely the other way around). The basic concept is to store and integrate seamless imagery of as much of the city as possible for future use as a virtual-reality version of Philadelphia, allowing for "virtual time travel," going back and immersing yourself in the city as it was on that day.

The original day for this was August 23, 1999, in order to give us 21st-century denizens a chance to revisit the 20th century. There will be a followup version (with better technology available) in 2003. I don't have the new site up yet as I just regained control of the domain. But anyone who's interested in more info - especially anybody in Philly - can email me and I'll keep you posted.
posted by soyjoy at 10:40 AM on November 20, 2002

I saw a book at LACMA that was one continuous photo of Sunset Blvd in Hollywood from around the middle of the 20th century. I can't remember all the details and my google skills are failing me, I'll see if I can dig up more info.
posted by jonah at 11:04 AM on November 20, 2002

Here we go, it was called "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" taken by Edward Ruscha. More links here at google. The photos are from 1966.
posted by jonah at 11:08 AM on November 20, 2002

Sorry, google link didn't work. Just search for "Every Building on the Sunset Strip" and you'll get 100+ good hits.
posted by jonah at 11:12 AM on November 20, 2002

There's also the California Coastal Records Project we discussed a few weeks ago.
posted by gwint at 1:02 PM on November 20, 2002

jonah - when i saw the site, Ruscha's book was the first thing i thought of . . . not that some things aren't worth revising with technology . . . they're just strikingly similar. it's also worth noting that he isn't called out specifically, only grouped into the mention "Andy Warhol and the Pop artists".
posted by nyoki at 1:10 PM on November 20, 2002

Wired reference, as well. They're the same guys who took pictures of every street corner in Manhattan - on the website, you could search by intersection and get all the pictures! Darned if I can find it again though...
posted by whatzit at 1:42 PM on November 20, 2002