Body and city captured inside the map: devices and counter-devices from Google Street View operational images

Abstract

 “I am inside the map”. These are the words that open the short film Nunca é Noite no Mapa (It’s Never Nighttime in the Map) (2016), by Ernesto de Carvalho. The perception that his own immaterialized body is perpetuated in some virtual coordinate prompts reflections on the control cartographies engendered by Google Street View's Nine Eyes. This text, from the observation of a growing artistic interest in the images of this photographic device – namely the aforementioned film and The Google Trilogy (2012), by Italian artist Emilio Vavarella –, will seek to weave an investigation into how to inhabit and how to act in a world mediated by the technologies of transparency and by the omnipresence of an operational, aperspectivistic and supposedly objective image.

Keywords: Google Street View; operational image; counter-devices; Ernesto de Carvalho; Emilio Vavarella