Thursday, March 14, 2024

Flip Off the World with Street View

The UK Houses of Parliament being flipped off on Street View

AI and Street View seems like the perfect match. Last month panoramai released a fun tool which allowed users to change the appearance of Google Maps Street View images based on their own AI prompts. The app became so popular it had to be turned off because of the costs being incurred by the developers (you can still browse the example images created with the app).

Now a new Ai and Street View project has been released. Only this time the Ai doesn't stand for 'artificial intelligence', but is actually the first name of the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Because Ai Weiwei has collaborated with Avant Arte to release an interactive mapping tool which allows you to create an image of any location in the world being flipped off on Street View.

Since 2017 the artist Ai Weiwei has taken self-portraits of his own hand giving the middle finger to various iconic landmarks and institutions around the world. The result is "Study of Perspective", a powerful photographic series of Ai Weiwei flipping off some of the world's most iconic global centers of power and cultural importance.

Now thanks to Middle Finger you can join in the fun. Using the Middle Finger interactive map you can navigate to anywhere in the world (that has Street View imagery) and create your own image of a location being flipped off. After you have created your custom Street View image you can then download the image or share it on social media.

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