User:MelBrunn/sandbox

The Nine Eyes of Google is an art project created by Joe Rafman, where he collected and sifted through the photos taken by Google's Google Street View Cameras and uploaded the bizarre and strange ones. This project is widely known for it's creativity and ingenuity from the eyes of a Google Street Car.

Biography
Joe Rafman (b. 1981 in Montreal, Canada) holds two degrees. One M.F.A from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A in Philosophy and Literature from McGill University. Rafman's Work focuses on technology and the digital media and he puts emphasis on how media can separate us from ourselves.

Exhibitions
Rahman started this project in 2007 and his art has been shown in various shows and museums. Including Rencontres d’Arles; New Jpegs, at the Johan Berggren Gallery in Malmo, Sweden, Free, at the New Museum in New York, and Speculations on Anonymous Materials at The Fridericianum in Kassel. He has contributed to exhibitions at New Museum (2010), The Saatchi Gallery (2012), Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (2010), Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (2012), Palais de Tokyo (2012), and The Fridericianum (2013).

He has also been in several solo exhibitions, including, Annals of Time Lost, at Future Gallery, Berlin (April 2013), A Man Digging, at Seventeen Gallery, London (May 2013), and You Are Standing in an Open Field ( Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, Sep 2013).

Content
Rafman gathers the extraordinary and beautiful sights captured by the nine lenses on Google Street View camera cars as they photograph scenes around the world. Where most people use Google Street View to see their own house, Joe Rafman accesses these pictures to create a picture-project of the world. This compilation of pictures from Google's Street View has become more of the world's portfolio of moments spoken through pictures. These moments define the strange world we live in and it captures all the instances and memories that the media and news could never capture or display. Some pictures include: theft, harassment, strange anomalies such as: random aliens, and unaccounted for twins, and even gang actions. Rahman said that he "was fascinated by how powerfully Street View photographs can represent our contemporary experience, the conflict they can express between an indifferent robotic camera and man's search for connectedness and significance" and this correlates with how he wants others to view the world.

Where to Purchase
His work can be bought on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/nine-eyes-google-street-view/dp/2365680011 for $2,342.74.