Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 11 Physical model
visualising the gross domestic
product per capita in
Germany (from Rase 2009 ,
p4)
''Producing a steric landscape relief is comparable to making music: the finest
details and nuances can only be produced by men and not by machines. My slogan
is: Do not give away the most creative work to machines—to create a landscape.
I want to do it myself.'' This statement by Toni Mair (Mair 2012 ), currently the
world-leading relief artist, best describes why today, in a period where cartography
is finding its way back to aesthetics (signposted by the founding of the ICA
Working Group on Art and Cartography in August 2008—now an ICA
Commission), manually generated landscape models are experiencing a sort of
renaissance. There exists general consensus that machine-generated landscape
models will at least in the near future not be able to replace handmade ones that are
produced by ''geo sculptors''. Only the human processor can really polish and
''fine-tune'' these landscape embodiments in order to make them look as natural
and vivid as the best of them are. Hence, such pieces of ''geo-art'' will always
remain in vogue and never lose their appeal.
4 Omniglobes and Hyperglobes
Besides the analogue, physical globes, which have been existing for several
centuries, since the beginning of this millennium more and more digital globes are
emerging on the market. Andreas Riedl (Vienna), one of the experts in digital
globes, distinguishes between hologlobes, digital hyperglobes and tactile hy-
perglobes. The latter ones are globes which show their cartographic image in real
representation space (instead of a virtual one), i.e. on a real, physical globe body.
Digital globes minimize the disadvantages of analogue globes, such as reduced
portability, small number of themes and long updating cycles (Riedl 2000 , 2012 ).
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