Copyrights

Copyrights (2011- Ongoing) is a project by Phil Thompson:

“The Google Art Project contains several paintings which have had a blur filter applied to them so as to make them unrecognisable. Google explain this decison stating that they were, ‘required to be blurred by the museums for reasons pertaining to copyrights.’
After collecting all of these images by taking screenshots and cropping out the blurred images, they were emailed to oil painting reproduction companies in China (chosen for its own issues with internet censorship and for its ongoing difficulties with Google), where they were painted to the scale of the original painting. These reproductions were shipped back to the UK and now become the art work.”

 

Postcards from Google Earth

Bridges 01

Postcards from Google Earth, by Clement Valla:

‘The images are screenshots from Google Earth with basic color adjustments and cropping. I am collecting these new typologies as a means of conservation – as Google Earth improves its 3D models, its terrain, and its satellite imagery, these strange, surrealist depictions of our built environment and its relation to the natural landscape will disappear in favor of better illusionistic imagery. However, I think these strange mappings of the 2-dimensional and the 3-dimensional provide us with fabulous forms that are purely the result of algorithmic processes and not of human aesthetic decision making. They are artifacts worth preserving.’

 

Over Data

Another great video by Marco Cadioli (aka Marco Manray):

“How will be Gloogle Earth without Earth?
Over Data is a machinima shot in Google Earth, but the images of the Earth are extinguished, annulled in a white neutral surface. Data, information and icons are the only ones that design, define and create the new landscape.”

[via mbf]

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

Google Street View Camera

This is a must-read. Artist Jon Rafman has written a wonderful essay on Google Street View for Art Fag City:

“One year ago, I started collecting screen captures of Google Street Views from a range of Street View blogs and through my own hunting. This essay illustrates how my Street View collections reflect the excitement of exploring this new, virtual world. The world captured by Google appears to be more truthful and more transparent because of the weight accorded to external reality, the perception of a neutral, unbiased recording, and even the vastness of the project. At the same time, I acknowledge that this way of photographing creates a cultural text like any other, a structured and structuring space whose codes and meaning the artist and the curator of the images can assist in constructing or deciphering.”

read more here
full project here