A Visual Search Engine for the Aerial Patterns of Cities
▻http://hyperallergic.com/301858/a-visual-search-engine-for-the-aerial-patterns-of-cities
Terrapattern, developed at the Carnegie Mellon Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, is the first open-access visual search tool for satellite imagery. It is currently available for Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New York City, Detroit, Austin, Miami, and Berlin. This means you may scan these cities’ landscapes for common forms of your particular interest that are not conventionally labelled on a map: circular backyard pools or cul-de-sacs, perhaps, or even dilapidated nautical wrecks. All you have to do is find the tile of topography that intrigues you, and dozens of search results of similar views will arrive courtesy of machine learning algorithms trained to sift through images from OpenStreetMap. You can then export these images as a geographic text file.