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Google's Mesmerizing Game Turns Scribbles Into Satellite Images

WIRED

Satellite images, with their zoomed-out view, have a way of reducing the world's features to a series of shapes and lines. In a new project called Land Lines, artists Zach Lieberman and Matt Felsen partnered with Google's Data Arts team to create an interactive platform that lets people explore these shapes with the drag of a finger. Think of Land Lines as reverse Google image search, but for lines. Using computer vision technology, Liberman and co were able to build a tool that matches hand-drawn lines to those found in a database of more than 50,000 Google satellite images. Draw a line on your desktop or phone, and Land Lines will find a landmass, freeway, bridge, river--something--that follows the same contour.