A moment on earth

April 18, 2007 5:54 AM

A Moment on Earth: hundreds of pictures of different places on earth, all taken at exactly the same time (Flash Based). On August 5th, 2004 at 12:00 Noon GMT, 60 filmmakers in over 40 countries and on all 7 continents captured a single "moment" on earth. The results were used to build a composite image of Iraq and the Pacific Ocean. By hovering over the composite image, the individual frames of the mosiac can be viewed along with details about the individual pictures.
posted by Mave_80 (14 comments total)

I like the concept. I'm not sure I understand what Iraq has to do with anything - it seems somewhat random.
posted by dmd at 6:14 AM on April 18, 2007

The results were used to build a composite image of Iraq and the Pacific Ocean.

Thereby destroying the cool "whole Earth" concept and leading to a pretty annoying UI.
posted by DU at 6:14 AM on April 18, 2007

Not quite true. There's two slightly different photos of a chap called George Grossman in amongst the flames in the background. They're right next to each other. I imagine there are other similar ones elsewhere. From the description elsewhere it sounds like there were short films made, of which the mosaic includes various snapshots.
posted by edd at 6:23 AM on April 18, 2007

Yea how did 60 photogs get thousands of images at the same time?

It is kind of cool, though the Iraq + Pacific Ocean thing is a weird distraction (why not put the pictures on a map of the earth? And put the pictures near the part of the earth where they were photographed? Not to mention that Iraq is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean). Cool-ish idea, not great execution.

PS I have not been able to find any naked lady pics.
posted by Mister_A at 7:13 AM on April 18, 2007

Very annoying UI indeed. Seems like a good candidate for a Google Maps mashup.
posted by scrm at 7:13 AM on April 18, 2007

I'll agree that the interface is pretty darn annoying. But as a concept, I thought it was cool. If you can get past the UI, there's a lot of interesting pictures / captions embedded in the photo
posted by Mave_80 at 7:40 AM on April 18, 2007

This is a fantastic post; the UI is annoying because of the random placement of images, but it I can forgive it because of the fantastic photos of Darwin and Adelaide, Australia.
posted by Jimbob at 7:53 AM on April 18, 2007

8 megabyte download, it should be noted.
posted by Dave Faris at 8:01 AM on April 18, 2007

An older attempt to offer a summa of life on earth- and my personal favorite in this genre- here and here.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:32 AM on April 18, 2007

Very nice. Thank you for the post.
posted by EatTheWeak at 8:41 AM on April 18, 2007

I enjoyed looking at postage-stamp-sized thumbnails of images. After all, it's only 2007, and our technology can't offer anything better.

In other words, I also found the interface annoying. I would have spent a lot longer there if it wasn't so bad. T6 he images themselves appeared really washed out too, giving the entire experience a 'retro 1996 over modem' feel.
posted by humblepigeon at 9:34 AM on April 18, 2007

See The Degree Confluence Project. Several orders of magnitude more complete and more awesome.
posted by dmd at 2:23 PM on April 18, 2007

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/12/history_of_phot.html
posted by jfrancis at 3:47 PM on April 18, 2007

Great concept, but the interface is too limited.
posted by zardoz at 5:00 PM on April 18, 2007