Our common perception of Antarctica is a large white mass that regulates the temperature of the Earth. Yet the tools we have to capture and visualise Antarctica distort typical expectations. The distribution of land formations outruns the static image, and what the satellite captures one day will differ from the next.

This project uses imagery solely sourced from Google Earth. This platform uses multiple sources of aerial and satellite images that Google Earth purchases from the U.S. Census Bureau’s “Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing” from the US Geological Survey. This data is compared to NASA’s satellite images and algorithms are employed to make the map readable and as accurate as possible; a process that takes months of data collocating and manual editing. The accuracy and clarity of image composition are prioritised in high-density areas, with rural and remote domains sometimes displayed in far less visual clarity. Each image was selected within a 200m-400m above-sea-level range of Antarctica. These images can be found in Google Earth as a single image with the specific collection date, but sometimes these images are combined into a mosaic of images taken over multiple days or months. These images vary in pixel quality and colour balance - at times clashing with other images in the mosaic.

With the ever-increasing visual analysis of Antarctica via satellite imagery, our perceptions of this continent are regularly enhanced - whether for scientific study or leisure. However, static images present an alternative, fixed perspective that isn’t reflective of the real-world dynamism of this continent. As geologies fix and unfix, the distributed and redistributed formations alter at a faster rate than the satellite image captures.