The introduction of accurately modelled terrain to Google Earth created some surprising results. Buildings appeared to be upside- down, bridges looked as though they had melted, highways twisted and bent. Artist and programmer Clement Valla began collecting these oddities and presenting them as Postcards from Google Earth . Valla argued they were not simple glitches, ‘they are the absolute logical result of the system. They are an edge condition – an anomaly within the system, a nonstandard, an outlier, even, but not an error.’ 4 These anomalies focus attention on the software and spoil an otherwise seamless illusion – Google’s software engineers used Valla’s images to create an algorithm that specifically identifies and adjusts highways and bridges. Both the ‘melting bridge’ problem and its solution were created by a series of assumptions or expectations of how things are, or ought to be. While both Google Maps and Google Earth present the semblance of the world in all its detail and peculiarity, the model is actually generated by a series of algorithms based on general rules. As a result, atypical objects produce strange results. Jon Rafman’s Nine Eyes of Google Street View is the result of patiently combing through Google’s most recent acquisitions looking for the ‘incredibly poetic, beautiful, sublime or violent and scary’. The images selected by Rafman are collected in gallery exhibitions and are posted on 9-eyes.com . Despite Google’s claim they are building a mirror of the real world, the images we see are not simply a reflection. Rafman learned to start each session by visiting the Street View site for a list of recent updates. ‘The best place to go for images is to check where the Google cars are and to follow those. Otherwise, Google may have removed any ‘anomalies’, which often make the most interesting images.’ 5 Google’s Earth and Street Views are most bizarre where Google’s aspirations directly conflict with the limitations they themselves have set. Familiar streets become more discomfiting than unfamiliar, and algorithms employing facial recognition software systematically (and literally) deface people in Street View. The ideology behind Google’s geo-spatial applications fosters the illusion of control. Rafman has compared the Street View camera to ‘the modern concept of God’ – omniscient and omnipresent. 6 Throughout our history, mapping new territory has had the paradoxical effect of making the world seem smaller, rather than larger. If Google can realise its goal of a complete and realistic model of the entire world, it will be an incredible achievement but it will also reduce the apparent complexity of natural systems. Google’s ideology is not malicious but it is dangerous. We are facing numerous problems at the scale of the natural world (climate change for example) and it is essential we remember these are fundamentally political, not technological, problems. c
Google 2014
Google vs Gehry. Google Maps struggles with the Walt Disney Concert Hall.
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Google 2014
Millennium Park, Chicago. A crowd of faceless people in front of Anish Kapoor’s ‘Cloud Gate’
4 Clement Valla, Rhizome.org , July 31, 2012, http://rhizome. org/editorial/2012/jul/31/ universal-texture/ (accessed January 06, 2014) 5 Jon Rafman, Artfagcity.com , August 12, 2009, http://www. artfagcity.com/2009/08/12/img- mgmt-the-nine-eyes-of-google- street-view/ (accessed January 14, 2014) 6 Willy Staley, ‘The 6th Floor; Eavesdropping on the Times Magazine’, December 16, 2013, http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes. com/2013/12/16/poaching- memories-from-googles- wandering-eye/ (accessed January 21, 2014)
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