Street With A View

Like most people, I often find myself spending hours walking around the virtual streets of Pittsburgh in Google Streetview. It's not like there's anything else to do here in London. Well I thought I had stumbled upon the world's most exciting street, but then I discovered I had been conned.



I'm disgusted.

Two American artists have created what they term 'the first artistic intervention in Google Street View.' Yes indeed. Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley approached Google with the idea of creating a series of staged tableaux along one street in Pittsburgh.

They include firemen rescuing a cat from a tree, a giant chicken sculpture, a woman dressed in a ham suit, a fake marathon, a rehearsing garage band, a mad scientist lab complete with "love laser", a high school marching band, a woman escaping from a window using a rope made from bed sheets and a medieval sword fight.

The project, called Street With A View, "introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View", said Hewlett and Kinsley on their website.

I can see cities 'managing their brand' (yuk) in this way in the future. But hey - the world always needs more giant chicken sculptures.