This Is What I See — But Not Really examines how Google street view shapes our imagining of the city by displaying images corresponding to one’s current location.
Google street view is historical. The imagery might represent a recent condition, but at least for now, it doesn’t represent the current condition. Yet, when we aren’t in a particular location, the ubiquitous imagery is assumed to represent the current condition of a place.
Thus when viewed in-situ—updating as you walk—the historical nature of the imagery is foregrounded. The images flicker from day to night, between weather and seasons, and from changing perspectives. This frenetic movement is in contrast to the seeming linearity and contiguity of the single perspective observed while walking. Here, the institutional imagining of place is juxtaposed against the personal experience.
“This Is What I See — But Not Really” is an alternative view of the same place, one that is remarkably different from the immediate experience.
Technicals
In order to access a user’s geolocation, the site had to be HTTPS, which required purchasing and installing an SSL certificate. Additionally, any libraries — in this case, JQuery — needed to be served from an HTTPS CDN.
Once enabled, the site accesses a device’s geolocation with the navigation.geolocation methods. The user’s position is continually polled by using the watchLocation() function. When the position changes, a new image is obtained.
As with Every Borough Has A Broadway, the street view image is obtained from Google’s static street view API by feeding it latitude and longitudinal coordinates.
Couple with:
- Movie Recutting (forthcoming)
- A Different Similar Center (030)