Virtual Landscapes

Over the last few years I have collected a 'favourites' file of favourite urban exploration websites. There are thousands of these in America, where the sheer size of some of the ruined buildings is incredible. Asylums, hospitals, prisons, old cemeteries, railway stations and lots of stuff on old factories. I am currently writing about Liverpool - dark, poetic ramblings through a city changing before my eyes - for a book with Alan McKernan; hopefully his dark, disjointed images and my text will work well together. So I thought I would chase up some of these urban exploration websites. And bizarrely some of them have disappeared; as if visited once long ago they have since closed down and been demolished. It conjured an image of endless virtual landscapes, website architecture become traceless, website archaeology, endless virtual Chinese boxes. I found it haunting.