Spying Google’s Street with a View
Google Street View has captured dozens of peculiarities as the company’s camera-equipped cars rove the country to record the nation’s street-scape. Now the company has revealed a hidden Easter Egg to welcome Street View to the streets of Pittsburgh.
The project was filmed on Sampsonia Way in North Pittsburgh back in May with the help of Google Street View technicians. Artists Robin Hewlitt and Ben Kinsley created the vision for the project, called Street with a View.
Street with a View contains a number of scenes, beginning with a marching band parade and welcome party. Other scenes include mad scientists, a garage band practice and even a duel by costumed swordsman.
While many of the peculiarities found on Street View are pure chance, this project is more akin to performance art for the digital age. In fact, the Street with a View project was sponsored by a grant from the Sprout Fund, the Carnegie Mellon School of Art and the Mattress Factory museum.
Here you can see local residents and members of the marching band stretched along the sides of Sampsonia Way to welcome the viewer. The marching band put on a show representing Langley High school.
This isn’t the only Street View feature hidden by Google employees in the massive video archive. There are also some other strange happenings hidden closer to Google Headquarters by prankster employees.
One such scene contains a few Google employees brawling in the middle of a Mountain View street. One employee seems to be strangling another while a third employee tries to pry them apart.
A search for ‘Niniane’ also leads to Mountain View to an information bubble to inform you that ‘Niniane kicks ass.’ Niniane Wang is a Googler whose name was hidden as a search query after she won a bet in a Washington state diner.
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November 6th, 2008
Check out the live Google Street Views of this area here:
http://streetviewgallery.corank.com