With billions of images stitched together in the street-view matrix, it is highly unlikely two artists operating independently of one another would happen upon nine identical scenes. On the other hand, in the huge dataset that is GSV, it’s understandable that artists would gravitate towards scenes that appeal to human emotion once they are identified and permalinked.

Navigating the Puzzle of Google Street View ‘Authorship’ ~ Pete Brook – Raw Files – Wired Magazine

“In Tumblr and blog culture, authorship tends to get lost as interesting texts get blogged and reblogged without even the expectation of citation,” says Rafman. “I’ve had my entire blog stripped and reposted on someone else’s blog without attribution. In fact, you know you have ’succeeded’ on the internet when your work is circulated so much that you lose authorship. The notion of an internet ‘commons’ can be a two-edged sword.”

Rafman’s Nine Eyes and Wolf’s A Series of Unfortunate Events are the two most well-known and most circulated projects of the Google Street View (GSV) ilk. Rafman continues to add images to Nine Eyes, while Wolf has since ventured into newer sets with a geographical focus on Paris and New York.

Its funny how words enter the common vernacular and find their way into daily conversation. Last night I was in the steam room at my gym after my workout talking with a naked human resources guy and that is what we were talking about. Relevance. I suppose it has something to do with the rise of Google or maybe because I am a search engine marketing director and it is a word I end up using quite a bit on a daily basis. I think what struck me was that the HR guy had injected it into the conversation first. I mentioned it as the another steam blast made it impossible to see and he agreed that it was a term that he hadn’t remember using as much in the past. Something to think about.