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** Nothing ** Google Earth as a visual medium for narrative storytelling as expected. Although images and place-markers are used within Google Earth to re-tell a story about an immigration experience, visual sensory representations aren’t enough to express a narrative story. Restriction to use text made it difficult to only tell a story visually. Although stories are told better with visual aid, a story without text is hard to communicate to other people. Visual representations through Google Earth are hard to communicate because images have different meaning to other people. Colin Ware explains that eyeball is like a digital camera and that we store information in our brain. The viewer looking at the pictures and place marks can view the pictures but they will have different interpretations of it. Rene Magritte supports this with his famous painting, “this is not a pipe”. Since emotions and meaning are not embedded with the image, the person viewing the images and icons on Google Earth will not have the same understanding and interpretation as the creator. The creator of the assignment has the ability to communicate the meaning of the image and without the creator; images will mean different things to a viewer. Also, the concept of aura is rejected when using Google Earth. The distance is not explained properly within Google Earth. With the click of the button, the viewer is taken to one place marker to another. This rejects Aura’s concept of distance. In this assignment, distance is irrelevant because viewing other countries is instantaneous. This rejects time and distance of the actual travel. It also does not have the details of time and distance that only text explains better than images. Overall, Google Earth is a great visual medium to see images but it does not have an accurate representation on telling narrative stories by just using visuals and limited text. Hanson & Jung Architects Inc. __Shop Portfolio__ September 2008. <  http://www.hjarchitects.ca/shop/sears-square-one-mississauga > Referenced on Feb 20, 2009. Wikimedia Commons September December 8, 2005. __ __ Referenced on Feb 20, 2009.
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