Street With a View - Artists and Google Maps Mess with our Minds

Last spring, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley collaborated with the Google Maps Street View documentation car and dozens of city-wide volunteers to stage several entertaining tableaus along Pittsburgh's Sampsonia Way. So as of this month, when you go to Google Maps Street View along this particular Northside neighborhood, you might notice several scenarios: a parade, a garage-band rehearsal, someone escaping from an second-story window with knotted sheets, a seventeenth-century sword fight, a walking ham, or just people checking you out as you check out their street.

Here's the Google Street View camera car, heading down the street. The great thing about this set-up is that the confetti is permanently part of the street scene now. I've included links here to these select scenes [Update: Google has since, of course, gone through this neighborhood numerous times since this originally posted, so now you can compare and contrast these scenes with the current look of the street at the links. Sobering to see how the lack of artifice can affect a neighborhood].



Parade crowd


Garage band


Marching band


Ham



Street Reviewer - Collective photos from Googles Maps Street View