Shot almost entirely on Google Earth, “On Accuracy in Science” is a three-part video work that combines fact and fiction, archive and allegory in a speculative documentary about the rise of digital cartography among technology companies.

The series is named after Jorge Luis Borges’ famous short story about an empire’s failed attempt to build a perfect 1:1 map, and picks up where the story left off. A new, tech-savvy generation stumbles upon the ruins of the map and sets out to rebuild them, confident that they can rebuild and even improve upon the perfect map without also recreating the empire. Narrated by an AI speech synthesizer whose style and tone match that of Borges’ fictional chronicler, the video revives the classic map-as-territory fable for the digital age.

“Part I: On Accuracy in Science” follows the new generation as they develop Street View-style surveillance technologies (“new Eyes that see further and in more detail than mere Human Eyes”) and smartphones (“Portable Curiosities”), while “Part II: On Accuracy in Business & Government” chronicles the commercialization of the map and its subsequent involvement in diplomacy, trade, policing, and surveillance. Finally, in “Part III: A Most Unfortunate Incident,” the cartographers unthinkingly move a border, inadvertently causing a territorial dispute.

By staging dark and fantastical scenes on Google Earth, the work fractures Google’s hegemonic cartography, inviting the audience to imagine new scales of resistance.