How can I arrive at a place that its materiality is ephemeral? A location that exists only to give place for what doesn’t belong, a location full of mistakes, error, wrong spelling, a land only made by its bad data. How can I get there? How can one make a mistake on purpose? I have to build myself a ship, a small one for that matter, one that surfaces both though the online realm and the physical world in order to get there.
It seems like where I’m going is a place that hasn’t always existed, I have found that it was first given a name in 2011 when it was released by Natural earth, a public domain map dataset. They have called it a “troubleshooting country”, they have referred to it as fictional, as a 1 by 1-meter square island situated in where the equator meets the prime meridian, With the, originates of 0 longitudes and 0 latitudes.
Natural earth strongly states “THIS ISLAND SHOULD NEVER BE SHOWN IN MAPPING”. The island’s only purpose is to be used during analysis to keep errant points off your maps. To be your default location instead of going nowhere.
It makes me wonder, what would happen if the island would be shown in mapping? What would it reveal, would it lose its mystery? And more so since is purpose is to store the data that doesn’t have a place to go, what would happen if Null Island would sink, where would all the mistakes go, would they pollute the rest of the ocean of information.
WARNING: A troubleshooting country has been added with an Indeterminate sovereignty class called Null Island (1, 2). It is a fictional, 1 meter square island located off Africa where the equator and prime meridian cross. Being centered at 0,0 (zero latitude, zero longitude) it is useful for flagging geocode failures which are routed to 0,0 by most mapping services. Aside: “Null Islands” exist for all local coordinate reference systems besides WGS84 like State Plane (and global if not using modern Greenwich prime meridian). Null Island in Natural Earth is scaleRank 100, indicating it should never be shown in mapping. Side note: Rank 30 (zoom 29 in Google speak) is 1:1 scale and would require over 288 billion million tiles with a total storage requirement of more than 3.5 billion million megabytes which verges on Borges’ essay On Exactitude in Science). Null Island should only be used during analysis and will keep errant points off your maps. A general rule of thumb in Natural Earth is to always limit your labels to the zoom that matches your current map scale (or one less for less dense labeling).
Natural earth: 1.3 release notes.
I have tried to map it, if not how can one get there. I’ve looked in google earth, I have found a blurry watermark that reveals some of its shapes, but while trying to zoom in, the task of finding where the land begins and the water ends becomes almost impossible. How can travelers go there, Are the residents trying to prevent anyone from arriving?.
I’ve asked many, but most comments don’t even know it exists. But how can that be possible, it seems like the perfect place to go and disconnect, a place where there is no judgment, no auto-correct, no right nor wrong, It seems like a place of freedom from self-doubt. Who wouldn’t want to be there? Maybe what Null island is trying to tell me has been there all along, maybe it is my mental state what can take me there.
I have probably been there before, but I just haven’t been able to stay. We all probably have. At least our information has traveled there.
I have found a source that reveals part of the activity on the island, a heat map, that shows the actions taken place on the location by athletes tracking their movement. I wonder what the big white line in the middle indicates?
I’m sailing but still not knowing where I will land, the pixels seem bigger. I’ve encountered that there used to be a website for the so-called “Republic of Null Island”, but it seems not to exist anymore. I have found a copy of it published in an archive website. It seems the unknown land actually had a flag, one made for colorblind people. With blue, orange and gray lines, and a circle in the middle.
They claim the slogan “like no place on earth”, and they refer to their people as null islanders, their economy is based around the extraction of sedimentary rock, by the Null Island Bauxite Extraction Company (NIBEC). By trying to dig into this company, I have found nothing, no records of money, no people who claim to have worked there, but on the other hand Bauxite seems to be extracted mainly in guinea, Null Island neighbor, so it doesn’t sound so much as a myth. Is this NIBEC a facade to what’s really going on on the island?.
This website that no longer exists is the source that has told me most about this place, but how come is not available or been updated in such a long time. They refer to their government by talking about President Smythe, I haven’t found records of this, other than John H. Smythe, The united states minister to Liberia, during the period of May 23, 1878 – December 22, 1881. What does could this mean?, what is the connection between John H.Smythe and the island?
I’m getting further and further away from home. Starting to fear that I might never get there. I'm scared I might go there and I'm not able to enter, the world is under a pandemic and here I am trying to cross borders, ones that belong to no one. I wonder what are the regulations, what are the limits, how do this borders look, are the fences? is there a wall ?. Maybe they are invisible and you go through them without noticing. That seems about right, but there have been reports that there's actually been quite some action lately in the island, a lot of the cases without assigned location have been placed in Null island :
"The virus doesn’t care about the borders.Up until yesterday, we had a lot of cases without an assigned location on Null Island, right off the coast of Africa, which is [a location in the ocean that has] zero coordinates [latitude and longitude]. It’s famous. I thought it was a great place to put everything that doesn’t have a specific location yet. But that upset a lot of people, so that’s gone."
Who did it upset? Did it upset Null Islanders? Because of giving them bad fame. Maybe knowing what's going on in the world they are trying to keep their land secret, for people not going there to quarantine in paradise. Maybe it upsets Natural Earth geocoders or cartographers. They don’t want the media to shine a light on this land it's supposed who “doesn't” exist but why would it be a matter if is not a real place, no one cares so much of a place that doesn’t exist, we have so many other things to worry about. Could it be that they are hiding something?
If I think of this Island which I'm traveling to as a place that exists for what doesn’t belong, I shouldn’t only think of badly tag pictures or misspelled tweets. it probably has something else hidden, something that doesn't want to be found, Maybe that’s how this Bermuda Triangle of Information works. Too laundry money or hide papers and political prisoners. Is seems like the “spelling badly tagged images could be just a facade for it to not interesting for people or for them not to go there. But if we look back at the Panama papers and tax invasion incidents. A place like Null island would be perfect to cover up the strategy of politicians, celebrities, global royalty, and of course the biggest companies.
The use of Null island as a place to keep their wealth secret makes sense…
What if by mapping the place, the documents become leaked?, becomes trackable, maybe Natural earth is in this whole thing as well . . .
But to hide money offshore one needs layers and accountants, lobbyists. And in a time of crisis like the world now, wouldn’t they want to get their money, or make sure everything is under control?
This road might be driving me crazy. When starting my journey I thought of the island as a paradise were nothing matters, and now I’m starting to think of it as a haven for something else. Null Island is the begging of the earth, ground zero, but if it is fictional, then it means the world beggings in fiction. Maybe that's the beauty of it, that if we begin with fiction, everything can be real because it's not starting from a strong basis or a grounded fact. By seeing it as the beginning of the world, it can also be seen as the end of it. But when something beggings there is something else ending, what could that be? what is on the other side? what lies underneath it?
A VOYAGE TO NULL ISLAND
This is a speculative expedition, that explores the journey to Null Island. The epicenter of the world of bad data. The most interesting place in geo-fiction. The busiest place in digital cartography, but its visitors don’t even realize they have been there, they arrive because of their mis-spellings. I’ve set myself a quest, to try to go there, and find out what this non-place is hiding.
90°N 0°O
90°N 0°O
70°N 5°O
70°N 5°O
54°00′S 38°03′O
54°00′S 38°03′O
0°S 24°03′O
0°S 24°03′O
15°04 S 0°03′O
15°04 S 0°03′O
9°30′33″N 13°42′44″O
9°30′33″N 13°42′44″O
25°N 71°O
24°29′00″S 46°41′00″O
25°N 71°O
24°29′00″S 46°41′00″O
44°N 135°O
44°N 135°O
I have come back to look in g.maps, it appears just as a body of water, but the island could be underneath, a civilization that exists underwater. Maybe is habitants can breathe underwater. Maybe it is like some sort of Atlantis, where the civilization is gone, but the ruins are still remaining. Maybe all found is a buried history, just as the images directed to the null island to become forgotten, lousy pieces of data. But what was this past civilization like, what are the traces left behind for us to unravel…
Actually thinking of Atlantis the fictional land, they come to exist many speculations of its location, and the possibility of having been an actual place. In 2009 the telegraph posted an article, where they showed a misterious triangle in Google Ocean, underneath the water. with the coordinates 35°15′15″N 24°15′30.53″O. So Atlantis fanatics said this could belong to the sunken city of Atlantis. But Google said that is was just a mistake in image processing. Again as if they are hiding something. it doesn’t seem that far away from null island either, could these two places be connected?
In a map found from the perspective of Herodotos and ancient greek geographer, it shows on the top of Africa, around the Sahra. The curiosity is that the image of the eye of the Sahara is extremely similar to the original description made by Plato.
21°7.6′N 11°24′O
21°7.6′N 11°24′O
78°35′7″N 104°11′9″O
78°35′7″N 104°11′9″O
If the data serve me right, I’m getting closer. But it feels like the more I know, the less I can locate this place, and understand its existence. My body seems to start to dissolve the more I advance the journey. This whole expedition might be an allegory of something else. I’m trying to find a place where I belong, were A body like mine can have company. New information keeps popping in the way, almost preventing I arrive there.
The skeptic’s society keeps blocking my way from each finding, debunking everything I seem to find. I have to keep believing that it is possible to arrive there. Maybe I should think there is some sort of treasure, like el Dorado, A city full of gold.
4°39′N 74°03′O
4°39′N 74°03′O
I’m starting to fear that I might glitch in the way, but I’m so close I don’t want to give up. The flat earth keeps popping in my way. Like a virus. the problem is that if it were to be true, it would mean that the center of the earth is not my destination, that I’m not going to the beginning, that I’m just roaming in circles in flat terrain.
Some of their claims seem to make sense, I’m flat body as well. They base their map in the azimuthal equidistant projection, where the north pole is in the center, and Antarctica is marking the borders. b o r d e r s... The one thing 1 thing, 1. that makes this whole theory interesting is that the human is the c3nter, it gives them a purpose. The null island gives pixilated bodies a place, a center a loc4tion…
4°39′N 4°03′S
4°39′N 4°03′S
After so much traveling Im starting to lose quality. quality. qual. i . ty. Each time I stop in a new location, my bod3e starts fr4gmentin6. I’ve ent·red the D$ARk web, IM scro==ling through 000, and 333… IHAVE found l3ak docVmentSS. My abilidad para leerlos esta cambiando.. cada ESCritura se va desvaneciendo a mis ojos. Pero no tiene sentido que todo esto no este funcionando. pprque no pued3 ten3r. Tengo que cambiar IDiom4 porque Esmpiexo a perder Entendimiento en este OC3eanno oscuro.
-4°39′N -4°03′E
-4°39′N -4°03′E
ERROR. ERODA, IVE FCOKEKB to be so close to Arrhtng , rthe destibathoh, I can see jthje curve 4 4 4 ,.. Houston we have a problem. the velocity acel3rates- , frgments of illusion, deptis notiond of TRUTH anehy many Mist4akes. I see it so N3ar 0 ISLAND. 0. No land quite like it......
41°24'12.2"N 2°10'26.5"E
0°N 0°E
this body is no longer available...
41°24'12.2"N 2°10'26.5"E
0°N 0°E