MAD-MADRID: A VIRTUAL DOPPLEGÄNGER
Our cities cannot be read solely through conventional urban planning. The devices connected to the global network and their ability to reproduce content have added a layer of data that encodes our perception of public space.
Each of us, as a user of several social networks, uploads constantly new images of the city to the web in real time. That database of images, linked to a landmark thanks to geolocated position technology, constitutes a continuously updated digital archive, which can be consulted anywhere in the world and, therefore, generates a virtual double of a place.
Thanks to digital photogrammetric techniques, and taking advantage of the malleability of virtual images, a three-dimensional model is built based on content uploaded to social media sites, as Instagram, Facebook or Google, and linked to symbolic and main public spaces of Madrid – Palacio Real, Gran Vía, Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol. These virtual objects synthesize an emerging code, a replica, parallel to the physical space, which is essential to understand how people occupy and communicate their experiences in contemporary urban agglomerations.