Wednesday, January 28, 2009

google parade on google street.



Image: Chicken by Nicolas Lampert,
via Street With A View.

Pittsburgh artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, with help from a mattress factory and a local gallery, collaborated with Google last year to inject performance and street art into Google map's street view feature. Giving the usually utilitarian (but often novel) feature a sense of culture and community to the streets(view) of Pittsburgh's Northside. They posed various scenes, an artist's chicken sculpture, a faux marathon, band practice, rapunzelesque mattress factory escapes, and in some cases the locals of the community caught on and joined in with the spectacle.


No doubt, this was somewhat inspired by the various unintended scenes that have been found on Google maps or street view, most of which have been removed. The topless sunbathing Dutch woman, a drunk Australian man passed out in his own gutter, crimes in progress, adult movie/market follies, and spectral looking entities open to interpretation, are a few of the things that have been found by street view wanderlust.


Soon enough, a schedule of google's street view-mobile will be blogged. Local business people, artists, exhibitionists, and nutjobs will take to the streets to pimp out their wares, creations, and ideologies for you to find while looking to get directions. David Koresh wannabe's with John 3:16 signs. Liquor stores advertising a 'street-view extravaganza!' of 2-for-1 Budwiser tall cans. Daniel showing his girlfriend how much he 'loves' her by getting a picture of them making out on google.com. Budding architecture firms throwing up guerilla installations to show off their design talent.


This is clearly the age where privacy dies and transparency reigns. Your identity can't be stolen, the world knows exactly who you are anyways. Everyone knows everything about you, your face is slapped across the internet, including a picture of you waving from your stoop on google street view when friends attempt to find where you live.



Image: Marching Band,
via Street With A View.

2 comments:

Damien said...

down with walls. literal and figurative.

k said...

Great piece - I am a Pittsburgh native and lover of Pittsburgh.
The mattress factory is an installation art museum started in 1977. Its an awesome museum, located in an old mattress factory on the North Side. http://www.mattress.org/ They have a few James Turrell pieces permanently installed. This is a great institution you should check it out.