The View From Down Here
Installation,
Research/art project, 2021

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Overview

This interactive installation exhibits hundreds of shadows of Google’s employers, collected whilst digitally wondering around the streets of London on Google Street View, in a self-contained, archival project of imagery from the virtual afterlife of data. The 300 beady red eyes of "The View From Down Here" capture the silhouette of the viewers and interrogate the unwilling agency they perform in the Information Age.

This interactive piece consists of 300 individually addressable LEDs controlled by Arduino, which receives serial messages from an openFrameworks programme that collects depth values from a Kinect camera. The whole programme runs on a RaspberryPi.

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Context & Research

"The View From Down Here" is a response to a case study around the social, political and cultural aspects of Google Street View. It aims to open a discussion regarding the ways in which Google appropriates an immense corpus of data, questioning the copyright issues that arise as a result. Finally, it looms over us as a grim reminder that the notion of “privacy” in public spaces has been rendered obsolete.

The unassailable nature of Google’s God’s-eye-view collapses when the human presence behind it becomes evident in the form of the ghostly shadows of the company’s photographers, who are tasked with roaming the streets immortalising our world with their lens.

Google Street View technology appeared in 2007 and is featured in Google Maps and Google Earth, providing 360° interactive panoramas of many streets around the world. Throughout the years it has substantially evolved, enhancing Google’s mission to organise the world’s information by making it universally accessible and useful. It offers vast amounts of qualitative urban information that is both spatially referenced and temporally revisited.

Google declares that the photos taken from them are public property - hence, no violation.

By inhabiting our environments, contributing with meanings, stories, values, we are producing infinite profit for Google to capture. The big corporation, which owns the monopoly of digital maps, appropriates and thrives on the ways in which we move and discover our surroundings - without having to pay for a thing.

As I was digitally wondering around the streets of London, I started noticing the shadows of Google’s drivers. The labour of its employers demystifies the technology, and their shadows unveil the collateral damage and the casualties caused by Google's monopoly.

Top

00. About01. Power Hungry 02. From Fringe To Finance03. False Signals04. Dual-Use Tech 05. The View From Down Here06. Material Success

00. About
01. Power Hungry
02. From Fringe To Finance
03. False Signals
04. Dual-Use Tech
05. The View From Down Here
06. Material Success