since my project is dealing with lines and their distortions, it is critical to examine how people experience and perceive those distortions. as i began to research these perceptions, i stumbled across a site called radical cartography which examines the earth in different ways. below is a map and description from the author which illustrates how one form is perceived in a multitide of ways - none of the current mapping typologies agree on the exact form of south america. their perceptions, or more acurately, interpretations, of the data each yield a different result which is only evident when they are compared.
Bill Rankin, 1999 A simple overlay makes the point that even satellite views of the globe are projections like any other. And given that there is no undistorted two-dimensional representation of a curved three-dimensional surface, one should ask whether "distortion" is even a useful category.
And yet the shape of South America is stable; like letterforms, or the word "tree," it is not any one shape in particular, but a set of relationships.
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