Submitted by Lugarshz:
The Google Streetview tool allows you to click on a street in google maps and get a pedestrian’s perspective. They do it by driving a car with a camera set up on the roof down many major streets in America and now Europe. It seems this town was ready for them and organized a giant prank on Google Street-view users.
From StreetWithAView.com:
Street With A View introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View.
On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh”™s Northside 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.
An incredible cast of real-life characters contributed their time, energy and talents to creating pseudo-street life on Sampsonia Way. Please check out the scene breakdown, the participant page and the video documentation to learn more about the artists, groups and participants that made Street With A View possible.
Check out the Making of “Street With A View” from Mattress Factory (a research and development lab for artists):
This project was supported by a Seed Award from The Sprout Fund, the Carnegie Mellon College of Fine Arts Office of the Dean, CMU School of Art, and The Mattress Factory Museum
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