Thanks to We Make Money Not Art, I discovered this fantastic art project, “Street With A View“, currently exhibited at Manipulating Reality (Florence).
“On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way. Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more…”
It is remotely connected to a small project I did in 2007 called Intrusive Connections. I attempted to disrupt the way Google maps works by adding pictures not related to locations but to my personal connections with these locations. It was a rebellion against “collective unconscious censure of any nonoperable or inconsistent consideration”.
Both projects have in common to put some human contingency into a tool perceived as purely utilitarian. But is it really? Maps, even from Google, are cultural constructions, and only give the illusion of neutrality. See for example the debate around the treatment of historic landmarks in Google maps: Online maps ‘wiping out history’. Maps are how we see the world and Google Street View is a fantastic cultural opportunity to shape our perception. The contrast between the Google impersonal car and the people in the streets below illustrates the contrast between a dehumanized geography and one from the people living in this world.
