The Astro-Theological Overlays for Google Earth - The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

The Astro-Theological Overlays for Google Earth
|| 8/12/2007 || 12:14 pm || Comments Off on The Astro-Theological Overlays for Google Earth || ||

Click on the image below to download the .kmz file [888 Kb] for Google Earth:

Instead of just wrapping the Astrological Calendar from 1544 around the earth, today I decided to place the calendar alongside the 3 holy locations of Catholicism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. This geographic juxtaposition of pagan symbolism with established religion makes this series of overlays one of the more interesting cartographic creations I’ve ever made.

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What I like best about these overlays is the quasi-Droste effect I was able to capture by using Google placemarks with the calendar’s central satellite image. The Droste effect is named after a Dutch company who’s advertisements featured a recursive graphic within the graphic. Such as a woman holding a box and the picture on the box is the same picture you are viewing. By placing the “Blue Marble” satellite image over the location of Google’s placemark, you get a sense of location. Above you see that the placemark for Mecca is at roughly the same location of where it should be in the satellite image. Thus its not so much Droste, but reverse scale, where you are able to see where the locations are on a larger map when close-up.

The .kmz file contains 3 locations:
1) The Vatican
2) Mecca
3) Jerusalem

Release Notes:
— The Vatican does not have a placemarker like Mecca or Jerusalem and it’s been scaled so that one must zoom in to see the calendar. Since the Vatican is not in the Eastern Hemisphere the use of the placemarker is not needed. I chose to place it over the obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Square because of the geometry Bernini employed when designing it. It looks as if it’s in the center of a pagan cross.
— For some reason Jerusalem is not always showing up in Google Earth. When I made the first version it would show up when playing the tour, but in this current version it’s showing up invisible. I was considering not releasing this layer, but I think it might just be a bug in the Mac OS X version. If it doesn’t show up on your version, please contact me. I am thinking of releasing the 3 individual layers instead of one bundled layer.
— I’d like to add a few other holy places like Salt Lake City or possibly some place in India. These locations might be included in the second release.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

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