For those of you who have seen my artwork- you will know that the google "street view" images came as an interest & surprise. At first I was not sure what to make of it- their images being so close to what I've making. A strange companion, google maps. Yesterday I finally looked around and found some really wonderful images- and something very nice about having a defined number of images for me to work with. A collaboration of sorts I guess. This one here was taken in my home town of Oakland, CA.
Now I went to a fun site: digg.com and have discovered photos of the cars that are taking the photos. In fact, microsoft is now also driving around taking their own god-dammed pictures (thank you). So far, one can only see a few of our metropolis's from a close-to-eye-level-view, but rumor has it that these cars are all over the place now and so it seems there is more and more on its way. I'm hoping they will become more international soon- I would love to check out the streets of Haiti or Chad or Istanbul, while at the same time petting my dog and drinking my tea. Multi-tasking 21st century style.
Here is a link to the photos of the google vehicles. I saw the green van on the Bay Bridge briefly- I should have taken a picture but I thought it was big brother out to get me.
Here is a link to a brief article about the microsoft ones vs. the google ones.
What is this desire that clearly more than just I have to document the roads and views and street life in our towns? What can we learn from this fascination? & from the images?
As now gigantic companies compete to document the mundane, I guess I'll sit here and consider documenting these documents.