Street Ghosts

For the "Street View" function of its online maps, search-behemoth Google has been industriously photographing the entire world. They don't bother to ask for permission from the cities they capture, or the people who are photographed, literally in passing, as collateral damage in Google's dreams of digitization. The artist Paolo Cirio turns Google's practice on its head, and uses the company's copyrighted photographs, without permission, to change the image of the streets. Life-sized pictures of people found on Google’s Street View are printed and posted at the exact spot where they were photographed. The posters are printed on thin paper and affixed to the walls of public buildings, giving them an ethereal quality – as if Cirio has made visible the specters of what would otherwise only have existed in Google's digital world. These street ghosts have already shown up in New York, Marseille and Berlin, and will now also adorn buildings in Amsterdam. While the physical evidence of the ghosts' appearance may vanish quickly, their documentation on the project's website will remain forever. Paolo Cirio will present the project at the Interactive Reality Exhibition at De Brakke Grond, as well as during on 24 November.