The Map and the Territory

In Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Map and the Territory, the (fictional) principal character gains some fame by creating a series of photographs of Michelin road maps. Some of the images are described in detail: in particular one taken of a map near the village of Châtelus-le-Marcheix.

I decided to recreate this (using Fragmentarium to simulate the camera optics). And of course I couldn’t resist to add a few singularities to the projection model.

As for the maps, I used the online version of Michelin’s road maps taken from the same region – hopefully this qualifies as fair use.

Click the images to see a larger version – these images work better when viewed large.

2 thoughts on “The Map and the Territory

  1. Great blog post! I’ve been studying matrices and coordinate space transformations the past couple of weeks with the intention of implementing exactly what you just described! Thank you for the great resource!

    Cheers
    Keith

  2. Looks really great! 🙂

    Could you provide a small code example of how to use a texture in this way and how you have placed the singularity?

    Regards,
    Stefan

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