As I have failed to mention for days, I curated the December exhibition for Art Micro Patronage, awkwardly entitled “Dériving An Imaginary City: Virtual Psychogeographies” and concerning my ongoing interests in maps, psychogeography, what Guy Debord would-and-would-not like about the future, spatial metaphors for the virtual, &c.
Art Micro Patronage is, of course, the latest experiment in arts funding from The Present Group, as recently highlighted in this ArtInfo article which upsettingly uses the word “rich.” In my secret life I designed the website.
12.12.11
[...] Speaking of artworks exploiting Google Maps, here is a piece that would no doubt have been included in this month’s exhibition had it only existed a little earlier: Google Shoot View, which uses Google Street View as the backdrop for a (plotless and not particularly fun, my favorite kind) first-person shooter game. (The website is currently down, whether due to Kottke-driven traffic, a complaint from Google, or in acknowledgement of the abhorrent nature of the idea, I don’t know.) So now you can stalk your home town with an automatic weapon, as you have no doubt always dreamed in some part of your meager little human heart. What makes this game abhorrent, of course, is not the fact that it exists but the inevitability of its existence. In fact it’s such an obvious idea that it surprises you to learn it didn’t exist already, which is where I would encourage the 0% of my readers who are outrage-prone to direct their outrage. [...]