Gallery: 19 Mind-Boggling Views of Factories and Nuclear Plants, Carved From Google Maps

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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    For her latest series, San Francisco-based artist Jenny Odell plucked factories, shipyards, nuclear sites and more from Google Maps. [Click here to enlarge](http://stag4.wired.com/design/2014/03/incredible-views-infrastructure-plucked-google-maps/#slide-id-434891:full)
  • “I chose these infrastructural elements to bring them back into the picture” Odell says “to hopefully remind viewers...
    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    “I chose these infrastructural elements to bring them back into the picture,” Odell says, “to hopefully remind viewers that products don’t come from nowhere, and that huge amounts of effort and resources underlie our experience of pedestrian, day-to-day first world life.”
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    A stunning satellite-borne view of a solar array.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    Here's the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    O’Dell is currently teaching a course on smartphone photography at Stanford.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    But even when you’re showcasing the forbidding machinery of late capitalism, there’s an aesthetic dimension involved.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    For Odell's purposes, the bigger and crazier the refinery, the better. “The insanely large Hyperion wastewater treatment plant in Los Angeles is better than, say, a small plant with only a couple of centrifuges,” she explains.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    This might be the coolest San Francisco International Airport has ever looked.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    Cropped out of their surroundings, sites like this one, in Pittsburg, end up looking like model train miniatures.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    A waste pond in Mexico.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    “I’ve been compared several times to a natural scientist, and I do see it like that: while looking around, I’m asking, what’s the most interesting specimen I can find of this thing? What varieties are there?”
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    A colorful field of shipping containers.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    Odell's outlook isn't entirely pessimistic, however.
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    Photos by Jenny Odell
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    “I really do think these structures are beautiful and compelling, if poignantly so,” she says.
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