Landscape

For my landscape I want to play around with the idea of cultural diffusion- each separate country has specific landmarks that define them. For example, the Statue of Liberty is AMERICAN, while the Eiffel Tower is definitely FRENCH. However, how many French people actually frequent the Eiffel Tower? It seems as if these landmarks are put in place to define a country to the rest of the world, however they have little to no modern cultural significance other than that they play well into the tourist industry. (Seriously, the last time I was at the Empire State Building, it was me and 200 Asian tourists).

Not that cultural diffusion is a bad thing, I just think that it is funny how these national landmarks are most frequented by people from other countries.

I want to make a fun, upbeat pop-up book to visualize this idea.

I plan on drawing a bunch of world landmarks in a fun, sketchy way, scanning them, altering them in illustrator, then creating a book with 'touristy' facts. Also, none of the landmarks are going to correspond with the correct countries, for example, the Parthenon may be in Japan, while a pagoda might be in New York. Its going to basically be a mixed up atlas, with the intent in spreading the meaning that these cultural landmarks really belong to mankind, and while they may have a historical cultural identity, they stand independent from their country of origin.