Google's Art Project Just Got a Lot Bigger

The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger (can you spot the skull?)

Google's Art Project provides Street View imagery taken inside art galleries around the world.

Today Google added new imagery for 151 more galleries and museums. The new additions include The National Gallery in London, the White House (see post below), The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.

As well as allowing users to virtually walk around the world's art galleries The Google Art Project lets users to inspect paintings up close. If you select an individual work of art you can pan and zoom into the painting to view it in close detail.

Hat-tip: Street View Funny

Mapping the Fonts of London

London Typographica aims to photographically record publicly available lettering and type throughout London.

The London Typographica iPhone app allows users to take pictures of fonts that they find out on the streets of London and post them to a Google Map. The map itself is a wonderful guide to the fonts used in street signs, on shop-fronts and in graffiti around the capital city.

If you click on a map marker on the map the submitted photograph of a found font appears in the map sidebar.

Hand Drawn Google Maps

With the help of over 200 students from University College London, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis created this UCL Hand-Drawn Map of London.

The hand-drawn map has been imported into Google Maps, presumably using the department's own GMap Image Cutter. It is interesting to zoom and pan around the map and explore how the students' perceive the world around them and how they view London's many suburbs and areas.



They Draw & Travel is a collection of wonderful user submitted hand-drawn maps.

A Google Map of submissions lets you browse the hand-drawn maps submitted to the They Draw & Travel website. You can click on any of the map markers to view the hand-drawn map submitted for that location.


Claire Murray;s Map of Edinburgh

Claire Murray is the creator of a hand-drawn map and guide to Scotland's capital city, which you can buy for only $10. The guide includes: where to find the best breakfasts; real pubs; fancy cocktails; what to do on a rainy day; how to conquer Arthurs Seat and a hell of a lot more.

Claire has used the Google Maps API to present her hand drawn map of Edinburgh on-line. The map uses the Google Map controls so it is possible to zoom in on the lovely detail of Claire's map, for example the naked ladies next to the Blue Blazer.

Interactive Bus Stops on Google Maps

Bus-Tops is a very exciting interactive art project launching in London today. Thirty red and black LED screens have been installed on the roofs of bus shelters around London. Absolutely anyone in the world can create artwork and hopefully get a chance to see their work displayed on one of the screens.

If you want to view the submitted artwork then you will need the Bus-Tops Screen Locations Map. It allows Londoner's to find their nearest Bus-Tops screen. The map also uses the Google Maps Styled Maps feature to give the map an appropriate red and blank design.

Google Maps is a Record

Julien Levesque is a French artist who has created a number of interesting Google Maps experiments.

Street Views Patchwork mixes together three different Street View images to make a new imaginary landscape. Once the page loads - keep watching, as after a few seconds a new imaginary landscape will appear.

Some of these imagined landscapes are truly beautiful. It must have taken Julien an age scouring Street View to find partial Street Views that match so perfectly.


Rock Around the World is a Google Map shaped to look like a record. Click on the map and the record spins around and plays Rock Around the Clock. Once you take your mouse off the map the record slows its spin and comes to a stop and the song slows and grinds to a halt.


Marker Attack is a simple map that uses the marker animations in the Google Maps API v3 with lettered map markers to attack the world with an avalanche of Google Map markers.


Yellow Road places a large number of different Google Maps in a chain. Each map is centred on a different location but each location has been carefully chosen so that it contains a horizontal road across the map. Each road connects with the road in the map to the left and right of it. The result is one long imaginary yellow brick road.

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A Google Maps Guide to São Paulo's Art

The Arte Fora do Museu project aims to map the works of art that can be found on the streets of São Paulo. The project's Google Map provides a great city guide to São Paulo's publicly accessible works of art.

The map highlights the murals, sculptures, architecturally important buildings and graffiti that can be found in the city's public spaces. Each art work on the map includes a detailed synopsis by an expert on the work.

If you click on a marker you can view the art work using Google Maps Street View, view the experts comments in a YouTube video and read a brief description of the work.

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Google Maps Satellite Art

Jenny Odell - Satellite Collections

Artist Jenny Odell creates beautiful collages from Google Maps satellite images.

"In all of my prints, I collect things that I've cut out from Google Satellite View -- parking lots, silos, landflls, waste ponds. The view from a satellite is not a human one, nor is it one we were ever really meant to see. But it is precisely from this inhuman point of view that we are able to read our own humanity, in all of its tiny, reliably repetitive marks upon the face of the earth."

Pong Socket - Earth Art

Pong Socket's exploration of the planet in Google Maps has concentrated on finding the beautiful patterns and textures that can be found in satellite view.

"Earth Art is about showing beautiful natural art from above by looking at incredibly unusual landscapes in places with extreme climate."

Rhett Dashwood - Google Maps Typography

Rhett Dashwood has also scoured Google Maps. Rhett, however, undertook the painstaking task of finding the letters of the alphabet in satellite view.

"Over the course of several months beginning October 2008 to April 2009 I've spent some of my spare time between commercial projects searching Google Maps hoping to discover land formations or buildings resembling letter forms."

Via: Matthew Sammon (G+)

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Hand Drawn Maps on Google Maps

They Draw & Travel is a collection of wonderful user submitted hand drawn maps.

As part of the launch of the website a Marvellous Map competition was held with a grand prize of $1,000 for the winner and 5 runner-ups each receiving $200. The six winners of the competition will be announced on Friday.

The World Map lets you browse the 225 maps (so far) submitted to They Draw & Travel on Google Maps. You can click on any of the 225 map markers and view the hand drawn map submitted for that location.

They Draw & Travel - World Map

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Cairo Street Art on Google Maps

Cairo Street Art has created a Google Map that allows anyone to post photos of graffiti found in and around the Egyptian capital.

The map is actually just an embedded Google My Map. It is a nice example of how you can create a cloud based map without any programming knowledge using a collaborative Google My Map and simply embedding the map in your website.

Cairo Street Art

Graffiti Maps From the Archives

• Red Bull Street View Art - graffiti found in Street View
• StreetArtLocator - user contributed map of street art
• South Central LA Graffiti Map - graffiti in South Central, LA
• Graff Map - map of graffiti locations around the world

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Design Events on Google Maps

A.N.D.

The A.N.D. project has created a Google Map to show the location of upcoming events in London, New York, Moscow and Tokyo in the fields of contemporary design, photography and architecture.

As you might imagine the A.N.D. project has put some thought into the design of their map. The map markers represent iconic buildings in each of the four cities. For example, New York's map marker is the Empire State building and London's is Big Ben.

If you click on one of the four building markers the map zooms to your chosen city and displays the upcoming events. Each of the event markers includes a label with the name of the event.

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U.S. Cultural Landmarks on Google Maps

CultureNow

This Google Map is mapping the locations of history, art and architecture in the public realm. The project was started in New York, and has mapped a huge number of cultural locations in the city, but now also shows cultural landmarks across the USA.

It is possible to search the map by category (and there are a lot of them). So, for example, it is possible to refine a search for art galleries, museums or historic buildings etc. If you click on a map marker you can get more information about the listing.

Each listing also includes a list of other nearby cultural locations.

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The Rise of Graffiti on Google Maps

Red Bull Street View Art

Red Bull are using Google Maps and Google Street View to present a crowd-sourced map of street art from around the world.

Using the map you can search for graffiti directly from the map and click on the map markers to view a Street View image of the art. The site includes quick links to the 'most viewed' and the 'latest additions' to the map. There are also quick links to works by popular graffiti artists such as Banksy and Keith Haring.

Adding your own finds to the map is very easy. It just involves finding the right location on the map and dragging the Street View to grab the best shot of the street art that you wish to submit.

Graffiti Maps From the Archives

• StreetArtLocator - user contributed map of street art
• South Central LA Graffiti Map - graffiti in South Central, LA
• Graff Map - map of graffiti locations around the world

Via: Street View Funny

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Street View Drives Inside Art Galleries

Google Art Project

The Street View car has mounted the steps of some of the world's most famous galleries and driven around snapping over 1,000 of the greatest paintings of all time (OK, Google actually invented a new Street View trolley to grab these images).

The Google Art Project has used Street View technology to create virtual tours inside 17 of the world’s most acclaimed art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain & The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Click on the 'Explore Gallery' option for any of the listed galleries and you can enter the virtual Street View tour. As well as virtually walking the art galleries you can inspect the paintings up close. If you select an individual work of art you can then pan and zoom into the painting to view it in close detail.



The gallery Street View tours can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps.

Via: Official Google Blog

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HTML5 Fractals in Google Maps

Julia Map

How can you not love Google when they continue to release amazing stuff like this Google Maps HTML5 Fractal Renderer?

Julia Map uses the HTML5 canvas with the Google Maps API to create Julia and Mandelbrot set fractals which you can pan and zoom into. When you zoom into the fractal the image is drawn on the fly in canvas.

In your exploring, when you come across images that blow your mind, you can grab the unique URL and share them with the world.

Via: Official Google Research Blog

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It's Street View but Is it Art?

The Nine Eyes of Google Street View


Artist Jon Rafman was so inspired by Google Street View that he put together this collection of images found by scouring Google Maps.

The collection showcases some of the beautiful images he has found but also exploers the more seedy side of life that can sometimes be found on Street View. Of course Jon Raffman isn't the first artist to be inspired by Street View.

Apres Garde

There are quite a few websites that collect fun and interesting finds from Google Street View. None of them however find quite so many beautiful shots as Apres Garde.

Matt Bucher recently wrote a guest post for Google Sightseeing explaining the rationale behind his personal choice of Street View images. He certainly does seem to have a good eye for the artistic shots captured by the Street View cameras.



I'm sure Apres Garde would be a great source of inspiration to the Street View artists out there. Such as Lehel Kovács, an Hungarian designer uses Google Street View as the starting point for his cityscapes.



Similarly, if you wish to take part in Bill Guffrey's Virtual Paintout I'm sure Apres Garde will get your creative juices flowing.


The Virtual Paintout is a blog that encourages the use of Google Street View as a resource for virtually travelling the world to find interesting locations and subjects to paint. Each month Bill sets a location and participants have to find an appropriate Street View from that location and paint the found image.

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Google Maps Collages

Jenny Odell's Satellite Collection

Graphic Designer Sarah Odell has created a series of beautiful digital collages using cut-out imagery from the satellite imagery on Google Maps.

The image above is made up of various cargo ships and other boats found on Google Maps. The other digital prints include collages of swimming pools, grain silos & water towers and square mile images from the Great Salt Lake.



Also See

• Apres Garde - Beautiful images found on Google Street View
• Lehel Kovács - Hungarian designer using Google Street View as the starting point for
• cityscapes
• Virtual Paintout - paintings inspired by Google Maps Street View

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Graffiti on Google Maps

Graff Map

Graff Map uses Google Maps to map graffiti locations around the world.

At the moment the map mainly shows graffiti in Melbourne, Australia. Users can submit their own locations to the map so hopefully the map will have wider coverage soon. Graff Map uses Street View where available to show pictures of the submitted graffiti but users can also submit their own photographs.

The developer of Graff Map has plans to add more functionality to the map soon, including, a top 10 list, voting, comments and tags.

Graffiti Maps From the Archives

• StreetArtLocator - user contributed map of street art.
• South Central LA Graffiti Map - graffiti in South Central, LA.
• Legal Walls - map of legal graffiti walls

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Finding Wall Mural Art with Google Maps

Mural Locator

The Mural Locator helps people locate murals around the world. The site contains a growing database of locations, photos, and documentation about murals and provides a handy Google Map so that you can quickly and easily find murals near your location.

The map uses marker clustering so you can tell at a glance how many murals are listed at a particular location. As you zoom in on the map individual murals are indicated with their own individual markers.

If you click on a map marker you can view a photograph of the mural and click through to get further details, such as the address and a description of the mural. If you know of a mural that isn't already listed you can submit its location by completing a short form.

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Google Maps on Canvas

Wish You Were Here

Megan Scheminske is an artist based in Portland, OR. Megan has produced two series of minimalist paintings, 'Wish You Were Here' and 'You Are Here', that are inspired by Google Maps. Megan even has a Google Map with photographs of the paintings in the 'You Are Here' series showing the locations they depict.

The 'Wish You Were Here' project is six 12" x 12" paintings on canvas depicting compositions culled from Google Maps. Each "location" lies somewhere within the five boroughs of New York City. The locations for the paintings were chosen solely on the basis of their abstract aesthetics.

Also See

The Virtual Paintout

The Virtual Paintout is a blog that is encouraging the use of Google Street View as a resource for virtually travelling the world to find interesting locations and subjects to paint.

Each month a new city is chosen and artists can then use Google Street View to find a subject to paint.

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Replacing Google with Hand Drawn Maps

Mapplers

Mapplers is a great project to create an atlas from hand drawn maps. Currently the map consists of a hand-drawn map of Brisbane that has been made interactive with the Google Maps API.

The site wants to expand the map with user contributions. If you wish to add a contribution you need to e-mail in your hand-drawn maps to the site's creator but there are plans to allow users to upload maps themselves.

Via: The Map Room

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