New York, September 11, 2001 - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 74

Zoomonareaofinterest:emergencyvehiclesontheWestSideHighwayatWest12thStreet,asseenby
Ikonossatellite,September15,2001.Actualscaleofpixelsasdisplayedinthegallery:1pixel=1meter.
ominously empty highways, removing the debris. New York City's rigorous
urban grids are broken up by the shadows of the buildings that remain, but also
by the dust and smoke and the rubble of the very large buildings that have col -
lapsed. At 11:54 in the morning, four days later, says the image, this is what it all
looked like.
But the image offers only a certain kind of evidence. When the pixels finally
reveal themselves as simply the pixels that make up the image, they are as silent as
what they are picturing. This evidence tells little and is of little use, forensically. In
their matter-of-factness, the pixels will stay, here on this image, even as the debris
is removed, day by day, from the site. At least we will always be able to locate the
rubble here.
So if in fact transparency is trivial, and nothing new is discovered about the
event, we must rather say: here it is, the event is encoded right here, by the light
that has travelled from the ground to the satellite, captured in an instant as the
memory of this event. As data. Mutable, yes, but no less a memory, all the same.
What is missing from this image is what is missing from the city or the world,
and it is always missing at the limits of 1-meter resolution, for all its detail. What is