Comparaison des photographies en fonction de la version de l'oeuvre (Annual rings, D. Oppenheim, 1968)

Annual Rings – Dennis Oppenheim (1968)

Annual Rings (1968), œuvre de Dennis Oppeheim exposée au musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC+) jusqu’au 8 avril a toute sa place dans la collection de (e)space & fiction. /\ Annual Rings (1968), a work of Dennis Oppeheim exhibited until April 8th at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Saint-Étienne Métropole (MAMC +) has to be in (e)space & fiction.

L’étoffe des cartes / Maps made up out of Whole Cloth

Dans le film Diamants sur canapé Holly tricote un objet aux formes curieuses. Serait-ce le plan d’un ranch  » ? Et si un fil invisible reliait carte et tricot ? /\ In the movie Breafkfast at Tiffany’s Holly is knitting an indistinct object, a ranch perhaps ? And if an invisible thread were connecting maps and knitting?

The Big Bang Theory et sa photo de mariage par satellite / TBBT Wedding Picture by Satellite

Les fans de TBBT (The Big Bang Theory) savent que le mariage de Howard et Bernadette est organisée en fonction du passage du satellite de Google. La séquence offre d’autres révélations inattendues. /\ TBBT (The Big Bang Theory)’s fans all know that Howard and Bernadette’s marriage is arranged in relation with Google Satellite’s trajectory.

Bomb run on Kiel planning / Préparation du bombardement de Kiel

The war lover / L’homme qui aimait la guerre – Leacock

The war lover is an 1962 American film directed by Philip Leacock. The storie takes place during the Second World War, on an English air base. It focuses on captain Buzz Rickson’s personality (Steve McQueen), pilot of a B-17 called The Body, and his relationship with people and life. With his co-pilot, Lieutenant Ed Bolland (Robert Wagner),…

Major Manchek's map / La carte du Major Manchek

Le premier SIG du cinéma ? Le Mystère Andromède / First GIS in Cinema ? The Andromeda Strain

 The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science-fiction film directed by Robert Wise and based on the novel The Andromeda Strain published in 1969 by Michael Crichton. It tells the story of a four-day major American scientific crisis, in a very structured way. Many and various spatial machineries support the narration :  split screen, text…

« Supermap » returns ! (and « Batmap » as well…)

Superpowers might give superheroes a very specific experience of space. Some examples of spatial machineries in comic books and movies confirm this idea. The superheroes are often confronted with original cartographic issues and often invent very precursory geospatial devices. So here are already Supermap and Batmap, before possibly, if you dig into your old Marvel magazines to find…

« Spiral Jetty », Robert Smithson. Land art : quand l’espace réel devient l’espace artistique / When Real Space Becomes Art Space

Land art emerged in the late 60’s. This contemporary art movement uses real spaces, with their various natural or human components, to support sustainable or ephemeral artistic creation, where real space pertains to the work itself. Early forms of land art emerged in the West of the USA. Some works of Land Art are huge…

Wayne’s world 1 & 2

Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2 are 1992 and 1993 movies realized respectively by Penelope Spheeris and Stephen Surjik. The first one tells the adventures of Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) who host a TV program from a cellar in Aurora, Illinois, USA. They attract an unreliable producer’s attention. Moreover, Wayne…

L’île d’Hashima est visible sur GoogleStreetView/ Hishima island is visible on GoogleStreetView

The Cubic site has relayed the announcement by Google that Hashima (or « Battleship ») Island is now visible on GoogleStreetView. The Hashima island is an old mine in the Japanese archipelago, located off Nagasaki, which was abandoned in 1974. Since that time no regular human activity takes place there. However the island has served as decor…

Exposition Vues d’en haut / Exhibition Views from above. Centre Pompidou, Metz

Here is an exhibition of Centre Pompidou in Metz which seems specially designed for (e)space&fiction. Views from above considers how an elevated perspective, from aerial photographs or satellite images, has transformed artists’ perception of the world since the mid-nineteenth century. A gold mine of images and ideas we have to visit later in details. L’exposition…

Point de repère, Musée Paul Dini, Villefranche-sur-Saône

The Paul Dini Museum of Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) presents from 03/23/2013 to 09/15/ 2013 an exhibition entitled « Landmark. » Le Musée Paul Dini de Villefranche-sur-Saône (Rhône, France) propose du 23 mars au 15 septembre 2013 une exposition temporaire intitulée : « Point de repère ».Le musée présente ainsi cette exposition : « Depuis que l’Homme est sur Terre,…

Skyfall. James Bond. Power and Map / Carte et puissance

Sébastien Caquard already pointed out here that James Bond used a geographic tracking device as early as in 1964 (Goldfinger). At that time, the idea of GPS technology was just emerging. At (e)space & fiction, we couldn’t keep ourselves from reacting to the debauchery of geospatial tools used in Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie, directed…

Ice Age, a new theory of the continental drift / L’Age des Glaces 4, une nouvelle théorie de la dérive des continents…

The fourth animation movie of the Ice Age series offers us a very fancy version of the theory of continental drift! Here, the upper mantle convection currents are no longer responsible for the movements of the crust. The cause is the rotation of a tiny core similar to a wheel in a hamster cage. Some other…

Enemy of the State: a location-based conspiration / Ennemi d’Etat: une conspiration géolocalisée

In  Enemy of the State,  Tony Scott addresses the topic of spying and global watch  of citizens by US security forces when they are suspected to represent a threat to internal security. This is a recent film version of a classic theme, that George Orwell had already taken as the central subject of his book…

Minority Report : is Big Brother already watching us ? / Big Brother nous surveille-t-il déjà ?

Minority Report is a Steven Spielberg film (2002) adapted of the eponymous short story that Philip K. Dick published in 1956. More than fifty years after being written, and although widely modified in the film version, the short story of Dr. K. Dick is still of a troubling modernity. When it was released, the film…

Geodigital tools in « 24 » Season 8/ Les outils géonumériques dans « 24 heures chrono » saison 8

The inventory of geodigital tools used in the final season of theTV series « 24 » was released on Monde Géonumérique. It is added to the inventories of seasons 4 to 7  (self-promotion). L’inventaire des outils géonumériques utilisés dans l’ultime saison de la série télévisée 24 est paru sur Monde Géonumérique. Il rejoint l’inventaire des saisons 4…

Stanley Kubrick : War Room and Space Rationality / salle de commandement et rationalité de l’espace

Stanley Kubrick, who died in 1999, is considered as a genius film director. He made only 13 films in 46 years, mainly because of his perfectionism and because of his insistence to gather a very high level of details before beginning to make the film.  However,  he was also the writer and the producer of…

Eric Rohmer, an « urban cine-geographer » ? / un « cinégéographe » de la ville ?

Eric Rohmer was part of the  « Nouvelle Vague » movement that radically changed the French cinema at the end of the ’50s and during the ’60s. He filmed the French urban landscapes and its profound transformation during these years. He has always been attentive in his films to the importance of urban places  and more generally to…

Le mani sulla città / Main basse sur la ville – Rosi

The Italian movies of 50s, 60s and 70s invented a new way to depict geography of Italy after second world war, especially urban landscapes. By describing what was supposed to become the geography of the new Italy, as well as its new architecture, urbanism and land planning, the Italian filmmakers wanted to show future face…

Die Hard 2 / 58 minutes pour vivre – Harlin

After the Nakatomi Plaza (see this post), the Washington Dulles International Airport is the new John McClane’s playground in this second opus of the Die Hard series directed in 1990 by Renny Harlin. Terrorists try to exfiltrate Ramon Esperanza, a general in exile from Val Verde, awaiting his trial in the United States. There are…

We used to wait – Arcade Fire

With the release of their new album The Suburbs and the beginning of their new concert tour, the Montreal band Arcade Fire offers an interesting geospatial and interactive experience. By entering a place of your choice on the site, ideally your childhood home address, you generate a custom clip based on images from Google Maps…

M (Fritz Lang 1931): Murder and Modern Mapping

M (dir. Fritz Lang 1931) tells the story of a serial killer who preys on children in 1930s Berlin, and who is on the run from police and an organized crime syndicate. The film begins with the murder of Elsie, the eighth child to be murdered. At the crime scene police find a paper bag…

Green Zone – Greengrass

The stylistic innovations that made the success of the TV series 24 are now influencing movies. A very clear example is Greenzone, the movie of Paul Greengrass. It is  saturated with maps, navigation softwares, satellite images and many other representations of the space of action. Of course Green Zone is based on a true story…

Sneakers / Les experts – Robinson

In Sneakers, a 1992 film, Robert Redford is the leader of a security expert team. We can notice 2 spatial machineries that are complete opposites  (and some other stuff, too). Quand Robert Redford est à la tête d’une bande de « spécialistes » en sécurité, cela donne « Les experts » (à ne pas confondre avec la série !),…

Up in the Air / (en suspens)

Up in the Air, a film by Jason Reitman (2009), is full of various spatial arrangements. The film itself is built as an erratic journey throughout the United States : Detroit, Michigan, Omaha, Nebraska, Las Vegas, Nevada, Florida, Wisconsin, Chicago… It is also a subtle evocation of the spatial dimension of  personal, family and work…