Google Earth has a dead pixel?

Art comes in many forms, and so does its inspiration. Dutch artist Helmut Smits, perhaps perturbed by a dead pixel on his own desktop monitor, got to wondering what a dead pixel would look like in the real world.

Using Google Earth as his reference point Smits calculated that a single pixel, when viewed from a height of 1km above the ground, would measure 82 square centimetres. So he burned an 82 cm² patch into the ground near his Rotterdam studio.


Despite the artwork’s title of ‘Dead Pixel in Google Earth’, however it can’t actually be seen using Google Earth because the snaps taken from satellite imagery and fly-bys date back several years.

However, we’re hoping that Smits will keep this square bare for long enough for a canny Google engineer to arrange for a high-altitude photo to be taken and the image incorporated into the current Google Earth database.