Flawed beauty: Apple Maps images with a twist

Norrby’s study has exposed Dali-like images in which buildings are shown melting and houses seem to distort into trees. In Barcelona a motorway is seen blocked by a building that motorists are led to drive over.

The warped images are created by glitches in the algorithms that Apple uses when converting images from 2D to 3D. Describing the shapes as ‘dystopic, twisted and psychedelic’, Norrby explains that the software sometimes fails to understand the underlying geometry from photographs, producing ‘hilarious, interesting and beautiful results’. 

For more on the growing influence of Glitch Design, read our Mega-system Style microtrend.