My time as a resident at the Tides Institute & Museum of Art in Eastport, Maine, highlighted the gap between the virtual and physical city. Google Maps, my initial guide, offered outdated, low-resolution imagery from 2009. While online visuals became sharper, Eastport remained digitally frozen.
I embarked on a unique exploration, inhabiting both the real Eastport and its outdated online counterpart. I interacted with the city's people and places while delving into the limited online representation, particularly on Google Maps.
Intrigued by the written reviews on Google Maps, I explored the perspectives of residents and visitors. They described their experience in different places throughout the town and built a narrative of the offline Eastport.
From these reviews and images, I constructed a "third city" – a unique interpretation that transcended mere service listings and rankings. It was a poetic interpretation of the collectively reviewed Eastport.
This experience made me wonder: Is this the only way to challenge the power of representation systems? Do we need to create our own interpretations, meanings, and personal maps to escape their influence?