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# Our Footprint in Motion...

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**A view from above, spanning the spectrum of space and time...** [*Timelapse*](https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=57.05317,-111.52465,7.775,latLng&t=0.84) is an interactive video that lets you explore the world as a mosaic of growth and decay. In these examples, we can visualize the effects of urban sprawl, infrastructure, development, erosion, deforestation and glacial decline. It's a fascinating and mesmerizing animation that captures the dynamic surface of our planet.

# <center >Our footprint is one of growth and decay. Observing the scope of these recordings really brings to light the consequences (both good and bad) humanity projects onto our natural environment.</center>

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**The Earth is a living, breathing canvas that we humans have held our paintbrush over for tens of thousands of years. Few (if any) living creatures have ever wielded that kind of strength over such a vast and storied composition.** For that reason, human impact is so tragically difficult to visualize. Until this past generation, we have been unable to fully *see* the entirety of our footprint from above. Satellite imagery has drastically changed this. **Images like these timelapses provide us with powerful windows into the reality of our work.**



[Timelapse is a project by Google Earth](https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=57.05317,-111.52465,7.775,latLng&t=0.84) and Carnegie Mellon University CREATE Lab's Time Machine Library. Using the data mined from 5 separate satellites orbiting the Earth, this mapping project compiled 3.95 terapixel global images into over 25,000,000 overlapping multi-resolution video tiles. 

This massive library of visual information spans just 32 years of human history, from 1984 to 2016. Though - *with this tiny glimpse of human history from above* - we can see how heavy handed we are.

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# Geo-Oculi 

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New perspectives like those revealed through orbiting satellites are very exciting to see. They represent totally new windows into the world around us. Throughout history, there have been several *jolts* of technology that have opened up perspectives just like this one. Over the next few weeks I'll be writing about just a few of these various *jolts* and their impact on the built fabric around us.

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Here's one of my favorite quotes by French artist Fernand Léger on the impact that the railroad car window had on 19th century Parisian art and culture...

***“If pictorial expression has changed, it is because modern life has necessitated it. . . . The view through the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with speed, has altered the habitual look of things. A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist. . . . The compression of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms, are the result of all this.”*** – Fernand Léger, 1914

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##  <center>follow me @voronoi  |  design collective @hitheryon</center>