Cape Town, South Africa, 1968: Search or Surveillance? - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 42

Full-frameimagesfromKH-4B
Coronasatellite,CapeTown,
SouthAfrica,November1968.

commercial enterprises promise virtually real-time delivery of 1-meter imagery from
a host of new private satellites to anyone who can afford them. The declassified
Corona archive makes older pictures widely available, and already what were Russian
military spy satellites are now providing fresh 2-meter resolution imagery on the
open market. Some 90 percent of the globe will soon be routinely monitored in a
1-meter grid—to monitor, learn about, and identify at the same time.
In November 1968, the Corona satellite passed over Cape Town. What remains
for us to see in these blurry, high-resolution pictures? We don't just see things on
the ground, places or people in and around Cape Town, apartheid city, seat of the
South African Parliament today as then. What's there is data, like it or not, and
now we can look at and into the images to monitor in our turn the creation of this
new datascape. Data need to be interpreted and never can be, fully. Scanning the
surface of the image, scale can disappear, while shapes and textures, differences
and identities, threats and possibilities, statements and metaphors emerge, mov -
ing in and out of the contexts that the long strips of film provide, but never guar -
antee. Things become unrecognizable here, familiar features decompose as others
come sharply into focus. Today, we can search, and watch, across many degrees of
magnification, for the future in this image.