Smart Objects is excited to share the launch of Googlegeist: Mirrors Behind the Curtain (Simulacrum)— An Online exhibition inside Google Street View, of Street View-based imagery.

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In December 2012, a Google photographer was paid to virtualize the Smart Objects gallery space— with Google Museum View screenshots displayed (of Google’s 9 eyed camera caught in the reflections of mirrors)— and it was successfully approved and uploaded to Google Street View(Business View) in the start of 2013.

Below is original statement for the series of screenshots installed in the gallery.

Over the past fifteen years Google has grown to become a ubiquitous omniscient entity, which has peered into almost every aspect of our public and private lives. It has documented everything from vast stretches of the earth’s terrain to the most personal emails. The word “Google” suggests a possible answer to almost every imaginable question. Google acts as both all-seeing God and prying Big Brother, a vast repository of objective fact and personal revelation.

Gibson’s series Mirrors Behind the Curtain reveals the self-censored workings of this all-seeing, all-knowing medium. The screenshots in this series are rare glimpses of Google’s elusive 9-eyed street view camera, busy at work, virtualizing the interiors of different museums, castles, and institutions of power around the world. Unlike normal street view though, in which Google’s car and camera have been easily masked out, the museums’ and castles’ plethora of mirrors present a situation where Google cannot cover its tracks. These images are ambivalent portraits of the often invisible, panoptic power of Google’s observation.