ESCAPE MAPS

In a world where everything is translated and maintained as data, what value can a reality that deviates from existing data hold? Can a digital map ever be a perfect representation of reality? Digital maps are more than mere navigation tools; they are a critical medium that reconstructs our reality and explores new possibilities. Prior to creating the artwork, we investigated the fluid reality that is not reflected on digital maps, focusing on how the map is becoming a blueprint for reality's reconstruction. By examining the new rules emerging at the boundary between virtual and real spaces, we seek to discover the invisible gaps and imperfections within the digital map and explore ways to fill those gaps through imagination.

Within the unfamiliar and infinite phantasm (幻影) presented by technology, the unknown world today is no longer a traditional place of exploration like a jungle or a desert. Instead, it is replaced by spaces not depicted by data, spaces not recognized by the camera as a building or a road, and spaces carrying the terror of information deficit. Physical space is believed to have been perfectly realized in virtual space, translated and transmitted as data. Even in the current trend of accumulating data and refining everything into a seamless system, 'deviant data'—such as a subway door opening on the opposite side to the announcement, navigation guiding to a dead end, or unrecognized uneven terrains—distort the real world.

The Composition of Digital Maps

How is the uncertainty of reality handled to implement an 'accurate' reality on the map?  Transient environments are updated with time and efficiency as variables and blind spots in the data that are not fully understood are synchronized with reality through voluntarily shared data (reviews, photos, feedback, etc.) within the platform ecosystem's boundaries. A portion of the data shared through individuals' platform labor is excluded based on opaque criteria. In this world made only of images, experience becomes perfectly controllable, and reality is simulated multiple times. We examine the data that failed to be valued and was excluded during the process of constructing the perfect digital map, along with the diverse perspectives and events contained within them. Where is the line between data that is approved and data that is rejected?

1. Excluded Data
a. Machine Learning and Map Updates
b. Data selected and excluded to improve location and directionality:
- "That's why a core ingredient in this new approach is applying machine learning to automatically decide which features to pay attention to, prioritizing features that are likely to be permanent parts of the scene and ignoring things like trees, dynamic light movement, and construction that are likely transient. This is just one of the many ways in which we use machine learning to improve accuracy."
c. Commentary on German houses removed from Street View and the Streisand Effect
d. Nighttime Street View provided by a Google Local Guide user was deleted.

2. Deviant Data
a. Trap Streets

[Image Caption] Aberrant Street View image uploaded for the Map Escape Tour Agency (2021) artwork. It incorporates the spatiotemporal data of the space and uses 3D space scanning technologies that are 'shown as they truly are' and services that analyze photographic data taken from multiple angles to create 3D models and spaces, thereby duplicating reality.

Virtual Reality and Counter-Representation

Reality begins to be re-represented based on selected and interpreted data. Digital maps as virtual reality and the new desires contained within them. Just as the purpose of creation and the perspective on the contemporary era can be observed in the production and expression methods of analog maps, we delve deeply into events related to current digital maps to draw out what is treated as important and recurring, as well as contemporary perspectives intertwined in complex positions. Can a new Rule generated in the virtual 'map' be reapplied to reality, or how is it being applied? How is 'perfect reality' separated from reality?

1. Events Intertwined with Digital Maps
a. Street View as an accessory to memory and the uncontrollable nature of being recorded
b. At the center of the conflict between Costa Rica and Nicaragua
c. The map guiding to the steep and dangerous Baxter Street
d. The gradually relaxed resolution of satellite photography
e. What Spatial Resolution Is Enough?

2. Counter-Representation of Digital Maps
a. Street View images becoming 'Big Data' through machine learning
b. Utilization of demographics estimated from cars in Street View
c. Improved environment perception at the street level and green canopy recognition

The Future of Mapping Might Be the Past of Gaming

Just as we find our way and information through real-world maps, maps play a crucial role in games for players to navigate virtual terrain and achieve goals. How are maps utilized in games? Games like Euro Truck Simulator, GTA, and Flight Simulator, which meticulously implement real-world spaces, utilize actual geographic information and map data to reproduce road networks, urban structures, and airports in detail. While games sometimes utilize digital map information, a recent trend is the reverse: attempts to use games to train autonomous driving. Open-world games like GTA, in particular, with their realistic traffic situations and road conditions, become an alternative to real driving data, offering a cost-effective environment for learning autonomous driving technology. Scenarios can be repeatedly experimented with within the virtual environment of the game.

Map Escape and Hacking Culture

To escape the game map, users—forsaking the game's original objective (mission)—utilize in-game bugs such as walking diagonally or getting stuck in gaps between spaces. They shrink or amplify the given conditions, exploring the composition of the game and occupying unknown spaces.
Through 'map escape' play, which involves voluntarily exploring spaces within the game, we explore physical spaces that have not yet been digitized on digital maps, and hack the digital map and virtual space by misusing platform mechanisms. In the present, where the concept of virtual space—replicated and newly constructed through the translation of reality—is being explored, we upload momentary and fluid aspects that cannot be selected and raise the issue of data excluded by invisible filtering. This leads us to rethink what exactly those excluded elements are excluded from.

[Image Caption] Summer 2021, scattering sand. During a residency in Busan, we produced and uploaded Street View images that adhered to Google Street View guidelines but deviated from common expectations. As of the current moment (April 2022), five months later, one of the six uploaded Street View images is no longer visible on Google Maps. We suspect it was classified as a night image because the sky was dark, even though it was the most realistic of the uploaded images.

Related Works

Map Escape Tour Agency, 2021
Map Escape Tour, 2022
Map Escape Tour: The Phantom, 2023