To change the world, begin with a sociology experiment on the internet

"To change the world, begin with the maps..." he says. A 26 year old man with jet black hair and serpentine green eyes according to his myspace profile, Nicholas Schiller has become the face of cartographical abstraction and digital isolation. His fame comes from his art, but the tesselations of aerial views of famous cities, schools, and occasionally people, are also the source of his obscurity, and in the catch-22 of most modern artists, also the cause of his fame. Confused? Here's an example: I would have had no interest in this avant-garde artistry if his article in the Philadelphia Inquirer didn't have a direct invitation at the end: "I'm interested in seeing other people's opinions," he says. "Will people blog about it? Will I be made fun of?" He creates a website that cannot be found "unless you've already been there", but also has a prominent article in a newspaper that is delivered everyday to my front doorstep. If you're one of the chosen ones, you can type in the cryptic name sequence (which, ironically, was also provided by the Inquirer article) in the google search engine, and finally press that "I'm Feeling Lucky" button (noted as step 2 in Find Nicholas Shiller by the Inquirer...quite handy, kudos to some spotless journalism there) leading directly to the website's home page. No disappointments here, the home page is impressive, a black page with the words "click here" in between the split halves of a person covered with what looked like hieroglyphics, but is really a warped version of Schiller's maps. No making fun of you yet, Schiller. Points for the metaphor of the empty space between two halves of a person being exactly where a map should be, and a knowing smile for your tasteful rendering of all of us split personalities being as mirror-oriented as your maps are...maybe our splits are not so different after all.

When I first started looking at the maps, I liked them, a lot. I couldn't decide which one I liked the most, though, and I realized it was not because I couldn't pick which color i liked the most or which design was most appropriately done for that particular picture, because I had no way of differentiating them. My home town is not on an ordinary map let alone Schiller's digital ones, so I didn't get to join in on the fun of "trying to find my house on a tesselated map", and once I searched around a little bit more on the different so-called "projects", I realized the only thing that differentiated one "project" from another was the spin put on the pictures...but if you were in a certain project, no matter what the picture was, the tesselation was always the same! So my question becomes, what are you trying to hide? So there can be some hidden irony in the multiplying President Bush pictures, and a bit of humor found that most of these pictures are in the tesselation that Schiller finds makes the pictures look most like gas masks, but honestly, there is so much to be said about creating a world of symmetry...maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I didn't find it.

Honestly, Nikolas Schiller has a whole lot of material to work with. Perhaps the point of the art is not it's meaning, but the irony of maps being hidden. This is an interesting turn, but seriously, he's got America to manipulate. The whole world, and if that isn't big enough, I'm sure NASA has a few solid shots of the solar system that would look nice in repeating planes around a center point...and if that's the only point of this experiment, and to get some bloggers checking out your website, congrats. I'm all in support of making a more symmetrical world...but challenge us. Why is it important to split the world with a mirror? What is there to gain from this test of the curiosity of the digital minds? Schiller you clearly have an interest in it, judging by your myriad of digital profiles, and the well maintained blogs and myspace page, but me, I'm just a fleck on your digital resume, half a pixellation in your map...manipulate that point, but who's manipulating me?

you're showing me the map, but not telling me the destination. Maybe I'm reading into this too much, maybe I expect too much, or maybe I'm just too hopped up on metaphors and meaning that I can't like art just for it's aesthetic qualities anymore...blame it on higher education. The colors are pretty. The likeness to gas masks in the abstract project is pretty interesting. If I had to pick a favorite, I would say the Hurricane Katrina pixellation, but you know why? Because turning something that wrecked such havoc throughout an entire city into a symmetrical, beautiful, calm picture has some fierce irony in it, as well as hope that maybe someday New Orleans will be mirroring it's past self, not Katrina, as it does in the picture. Sorry if that wasn't the point.