Zoom Zoom Zoom (024)

Zoom Zoom Zoom is a triptych studying the relationship between scale, resolution, and zooming in aerial imagery.

The first image functions as a ‘typical’ zoom, where an increasingly smaller geographic extent fills the same area. The second image crops its extent to match the area presented in the first, while maintaining its pixel resolution and scale. The third image resamples pixels within the smallest extent as the first zooms out, with the largest extent being the most “pixelated”.

Why Zoom?

Zooming digitally represents the same features — whether buildings, parks, or streets — at different scales. However, each change in scale also means a change in resolution, transforming the feature again as it has more or less detail. Furthermore, each change in scale prompts a change in adjacency, and meaning, between those features. A leaf becomes a tree, which becomes a forest, which becomes a park in the city.

Technicals

The cropped and zoomed images were exported from QGIS at the various resolutions and extents. The pixelated third image is generated in the browser using p5.js, which also handles the scrolling action to change scales.

Next Steps
  • Export pixelated images from Processing rather than generate them in the browser, for better performance.
  • Repeat the study for other areas of New York City.