Review of Imaginary Cities — ICT & Computing in Education

Imaginary Cityscape, photographed by Terry Freedman

Review of Imaginary Cities

August 29, 2019

The Imaginary Cities exhibition at the British Library is an interesting merger of art and programming. The British Library has digitised a million images, including city maps. Imaginary Cities illustrates what can be done when someone with imagination uses programming to generate artwork and new cityscapes from archived maps.

I also love the idea that old city maps are being used in ways that they had never been intended for, and which the cartographers could never have imagined.

The exhibition is on only until 1st September 2019, so if you have a chance to see it, do. It’s not very big, so it won’t take up much time, and it’s free and requires no advance booking.

Here is a short video of a computer-generated cityscape, with a simulated day/night cycle, based on early maps of New York City.

For more information, please visit Imaginary Cities.

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