Saturday, January 01, 2011

Disaggregation as transformation?

IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

The collections of Street Views both celebrate and critique the current world. To deny Google’s power over framing our perceptions would be delusional, but the curator, in seeking out frames within these frames, reminds us of our humanity. The artist/curator, in reasserting the significance of the human gaze within Street View, recognizes the pain and disempowerment in being declared insignificant. The artist/curator challenges Google’s imperial claims and questions the company’s right to be the only one framing our cognitions and perceptions.
We know that Google's thumbnails, by aggregating images for a different purpose than the individual orginals, are transformative and therefore fair use.  What about the opposite--pulling out a few selected pictures from a greater stream?

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