Brooklyn-Based Artist Jason Isolini Is Hacking Google To Create Surreal Street View Art

An anonymous reader shares a report from Motherboard: Brooklyn-based artist Jason Isolini worked as a contractor for Google Maps, capturing 360-images inside businesses and uploading them. Now, instead of capturing true-to-live panorama images, Isolini is uploading surreal collages that subvert the purpose of Google Maps: to be a tool that brings users from their current location to a business. 'Since August 2017, Isolini has made 42 'contributions' to the Google Maps landscape and they've accumulated just shy of 200,000 views,' the report says. 'In some of his earlier works, Isolini inserted collages of photos -- like street signs, monopoly pieces, laundry detergent bottles -- into spaces around Brooklyn.'

'More recently, in addition to his memorial at the site of the accident at Mill Avenue and Washington Street [in Temple, Arizona, where a self-driving car developed by Uber struck and killed Elaine Herzberg in March 2018], he's superimposed his work onto 360-degree views of art buildings like the Simon Lee Gallery and inserted a images of abandonment and destruction over the entrance to the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. A cigarette, a broken glass screen, USB ports on a slab of stone, leading to nowhere.'

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