Gallery: 19 Mind-Boggling Views of Factories and Nuclear Plants, Carved From Google Maps
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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)
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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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A stunning satellite-borne view of a solar array.
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Here's the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona.
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O’Dell is currently teaching a course on smartphone photography at Stanford.
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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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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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This might be the coolest San Francisco International Airport has ever looked.
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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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A waste pond in Mexico.
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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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A colorful field of shipping containers.
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Odell's outlook isn't entirely pessimistic, however.
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“I really do think these structures are beautiful and compelling, if poignantly so,” she says.
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“I’m amazed by what we’ve developed–and that it works–even if the bigger picture is more troubling. Someone recently remarked that he walked out of my show laughing. I think there will always be something fascinating and delightful about seeing ourselves and our structures in miniature.”
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One of Odell's earlier pieces, *125 Swimming Pools*.
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*100 Container Ships*
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A detail from an older piece, *295 Roadside Signs*.
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And one from *10 Waterslide Configurations*.
