http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/01/the-best-way-to-kick.php

http://www.streetwithaview.com/

Community Performance in Google Street View

This piece is not technically challenging but rather its concept is fun and strikes an issue of concern. Google Maps Street View has been immensely useful for many people but also bothers many people of his lack of privacy concerns. So a group of artists “staged collective performances and actions that took place just as the Google Car was driving through the neighbourhood: a 17th-century sword fight, a lady escaping through the window using bed linen, a gigantic chicken, a parade with a brass band and majorettes, the lab of the inventor of a laser that makes people fall in love, etc. The images that document the events have become an integral part of the Google image archive.”

Now, these images are stored in Google’s databases permanently and serve as documentation for what is at any specific point in the world. “With their series of collective performances and actions, Kinsley and Hewlett create an analogy between their carefully planned and coordinated artistic events and the equally fictitious reality presented by Google.”

Oh, and this project came from the CMU CFA. Coincidence.

With the complicity of both the inhabitants of Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh and Google Street View, artists Ben Kinsley and Robin Hewlett staged collective performances and actions that took place just as the Google Car was driving through the neighbourhood: a 17th-century sword fight, a lady escaping through the window using bed linen, a gigantic chicken, a parade with a brass band and majorettes, the lab of the inventor of a laser that makes people fall in love, etc. The images that document the events have become an integral part of the Google image archive.