Today the Google Cultural Institute announced the Google Street Art Project. Honestly, I didn't even know it was going to happen. And yet I'm so thrilled! I actually happen to love street srt, and these 5000 beautiful images are incredible.
This is in Buenos Aires, and if you want you can see it's location on a map.
But the map doesn't itself give you this sense of the location. Place is about the feel, the view, the people. That's why Street View is such an exciting tool, it helps people understand so much about the world.
More interesting to me right now is thinking about Street Art. Street Art is often an ephemeral practice, and that's part of the appeal. While Banksy pieces may be preserved to help the property values go up, much Street Art is covered up, cleaned up, or itself tagged over by other artists. It's an artistic representation in the public sphere that both invades but also reflects a sense of the community. The artists have to go someplace and become, at least temporarily, part of the space. And they must accept that their piece won't last, won't be preserved in a gallery (for the most part).
And they have to be found. People walk by their art. Whether grand or small
it evokes a response and both conveys a sense of the space and shapes it. Check out the Street Art Project.
