Category: Street View

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The Kissing Project

The kiss is a symbol of love and intimacy. Many artists have produced iconic works about it. From Gustav Klimt’s masterpiece “The Kiss” (1907) to Warhol’s experimental 50 minutes silent film “Kiss” (1963), artists have taken up the gesture of the kiss as subject matter. A black & white photograph taken in the 1950’s by an unknown photographer in Nelson, BC, provided the inspiration for the Kissing Project (2017).

Vancouver artist, Sylvia Grace Borda, in partnership with Nelson area residents have worked together to create the first staged net artworks in the Columbia Basin area to reside inside Google Street View. The artist invited participants to be caught in a staged kiss for the camera that are then incorporated into the Street View image stream. Continue reading The Kissing Project

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Playing with Google: Street View Performance and Installation Artists

In a recent post, I drew a distinction between two groups of artists that use Google Street View as part of their creative work:

1) Scavengers who treat the mapping service as a colossal mechanized digital photographer and

2) Performance and Installation artists who aim to have their work recorded by a passing Street View camera and see their piece included in the public Street View image stream. Continue reading Playing with Google: Street View Performance and Installation Artists

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Kaka’ako Murals & Tags

Honolulu’s Kaka’ako neightborhood is known for its colorful murals. To celebrate the start of the new year, I went ‘holoholo’ walkabout through the neighborhood and took a few pictures of my favorites along the way.

Back at the house, I took a look at Google’s Street View for a few of the locations I had visited and discovered more fantastic murals there. Continue reading Kaka’ako Murals & Tags

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Accidental Street Photography: Google Street View Scavengers

The launch of Google Street View services in 2007 was followed almost immediately by the emergence of its very own art genre: Street View Art. In 2011, just a few years after the launch of GSV, Pete Brook of Wired hailed the emergence of the new genre with exuberant excitement, announcing that

The Street View car is like the ultimate street photographer, a robo Cartier-Bresson methodically scouring the streets and documenting what it sees — Pete Brook, Wired

While Brook’s article offers a great selection of early Street View art, the comparison between a digital mapping machine and a hybrid mashup of RoboCop, a Hollywood created SciFi robotic police officer, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the flesh and blood pioneer of street photography in the twentieth century, may seem hyperbolic and somewhat besides the point when it comes to the impact of Google’s Street View images on the arts and popular culture. Continue reading Accidental Street Photography: Google Street View Scavengers