Street with a View

Contemplating the gradual progress of Google's impartial, all-seeing "Street View" eye through America's streets, two Pittsburgh artists embarked on a mission to add some new, community-centric layers to the company's visual record. Hence "Street with a View," on an alley in Pittsburgh's North Side:

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh’s North Side 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... 

Street View technicians captured 360-degree photographs of the street with the scenes in action and integrated the images into the Street View mapping platform. This first-ever artistic intervention in Google Street View made its debut on the web in November of 2008.

The end result is a clever blurring of fact and fiction, one that tells much more of a story about the street and its inhabitants. Check out all the constituent parts of the event that, sure enough, made it into Google Maps.

The marching band's musical choice is a nice touch. (Via.)

Comments

[Chester Weir]

Chris,

This reminds me of a story that ran here in Seattle a few months back. Vigilante journalism was born on YouTube when a downtown resident was tired of having drugs, vice and prostitution going down in the alley outside her apartment window.

In order to bring light to the problem, and embarrass the Seattle police, who were typically slow to respond to her complaints, she videotaped the activities from above and posted them on the web. The newspapers got wind of her efforts and it became a bit of a story.

Chester

[Chester Weir]

a link is here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DeliciousCity

[Krishna]

This is really nice post and also videos are also very good.