9 Eyes

Check out 9 Eyes, the amazing photo gallery of images captured from Google Street View:

The page’s title refers to the device, basically a pole with nine cameras attached, that is Google’s weapon in its ongoing campaign to photograph… well, everywhere and everything.

In the last few years Google has dispatched a fleet of vehicles armed with the nine-in-one cam all over the world in an attempt to get as much visual data of our planet’s streets and byways as possible. Thanks to this endeavor, surely the largest photographic project in history, we can now access images of every imaginable corner of the world – and plenty of unimagined corners.

9 Eyes’ “curator,” Jon Rafman, combed through the all-but infinite archive of images on the Google Maps’ Street View function (along with other Street View blogs) and selected images for their artistic or documentary value. The results are spellbinding: a sequence of randomly made, ingeniously selected images cascading down the page one after the other with no context, no explanation, each one revealing something beautiful or bizarre or breathtaking.

After a while, the cumulative effect made me laugh out of delight and disbelief – and once or twice I even felt tears jump into my eyes. It has something of the effect of Koyaanisqatsi, the majesty and mayhem of our shared destiny presented nonjudgmentally. It seems to tell a story. But it’s a weird story.

“Google Street View is the greatest photographer ever – when paired with a good editor,” wrote a friend of mine. Rafman has brilliantly curated this project as if he was dealing with the work of an artist – or indeed, many of them. The “show” alternates between grim photojournalism – prostitutes, paramilitary forces, hostile baby gangsters on prosaic street corners – and glimpses of staggering beauty. Some of the images have the fascinating industrial forms and postmodern juxtapositions found in the work of Andreas Gursky and Edward Burtynsky. Rafman also cleverly includes lovely rainbows of digital noise to illuminate his collection.

I can’t even begin to imagine all the work that went into the editing.

Mistakes make for some of the most interesting photos. The random framing and lighting of a camera test or a drunken snapshot reveals an object or room in unexpected ways. Candids let us study weird, unselfconscious body poses. Examples have only proliferated in the digital age. I’ve often thought such photos would make a great show; 9 Eyes is the logical progression of that idea. Google Street View is a database of millions of candids.

It’s something to see some of the things that we think of doing in the street. Look at how many people are laying down in these pictures – some for good reasons (they’re hurt, or they’re drunk), but with others there’s no guessing. They look like characters in an absurdist film.

At times, a particular quality of light or movement will make a person or object seem unnatural. In one photo a group of little girls running towards the camera look like they’re floating above the ground. Some of the images are so inexplicable they seem to be dreams.

Other things you see a lot of on 9 Eyes:

• animals
• car accidents
• guns
• people flipping off the camera
• people under arrest
• people scaling walls
• prostitutes
• Segways

I love how in many cases there’s no obvious way to tell where in the world these things are taking place. It’s a testament to the underlying unity of our civilization: how similar are the corporate plazas, how similar are the ghettos.

Questions:

• Did the Google drivers (or technicians or whatever they are; I can’t imagine they’re well-paid) ever stop to help the many accident victims seen here?
• Can Google’s photographs be used as criminal evidence?
• Did the drivers ever sneakily alter or improvise their routes to purposefully photograph something crazy or beautiful? Is it all really random?
• Come on, how the hell did they get that snapshot of the gorillas?

The lack of text on 9 Eyes is one of its strengths, but Rafman provides thoughtful commentary on his creation at Art Fag City:

IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

It’s a great supplement to the gallery, with some photos that didn’t make the cut, and captions that shed different light on the images.

At the heart of his project, as Rafman explicitly states, is the question of whether any one company or entity has a legitimate claim on fabricating our vision of our world. Are all of these prostitutes and victims and people and animals doing strange things what the world really looks like? If there’s something funny or disturbing here, if it seems like art, or a hallucination – is that just a trick of the process? Is this our world, or just the world as Google sees it?

Or actually, since we’re at one more remove, is it just the world as Jon Rafman sees it? Never mind, I’ll take it for now.

Offside

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be attending a special benefit screening of Iranian director  Jafar Panahi’s Offside. The benefit, hosted by Sydney Film Festival and Aussie distributor Madman Entertainment, is also intended as a protest against the unjust imprisonment of Panahi and his colleague Mohammad Rasoulof by the Iranian government last December. The two men were sentenced to six years in jail, and also banned from making films or leaving the country for 20 years, for supposedly making propaganda against the government. Melbourne Film Festival and Adelaide Film Festival (which is now taking place, and which I visited last weekend) will join in the protest with their own screenings this weekend. All proceeds will go to the campaign to hire an elite team of commandoes with mutant powers to break Panahi and Rasoulof out of prison. (I only made part of that up.)

More information on each screening here:

Sydney screening

Adelaide screening

Melbourne screening

Completely aside from the protest, I’m psyched about seeing Offside. I’ve recently become fascinated with Iranian cinema – the Iranian new wave is widely regarded as one of the most happening things in film right now, and from what I’ve seen so far I believe the hype. Panahi is one of the key figures in the movement. I’ve only seen one other of his features, Crimson Gold (2003) – and by the way it’s really good – so I can’t comment extensively on his work at this point.

It also happens that Panahi supervised the editing of two of my favorite films of last year: Orion (directed by Zamani Esmati) and Gesher (directed by Vahid Vakilifar). I interviewed both of those young directors while working at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival; Esmati in particular spoke at length about how much Panahi’s mentorship meant to him.

Offside (2006) which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is known as Panahi’s most accessible film. It’s a comic story about young women who disguise themselves as boys to sneak into a soccer stadium (where no females are allowed) to watch their beloved Iranian national team play a World Cup qualifier. Comic, maybe, but it sounds like the plot leaves plenty of opportunity for commentary on the status of women in Iran – in any case, the film was shot on the run.

For me, Iranian cinema + soccer = win/win.

Meanwhile, check out Panahi’s most recent work, the short film The Accordion (2010). It’s good. It’s packed with symbols of the Iranian protest movement, yet it has a light touch and is a great little piece of filmmaking on its own.

(Note: there isn’t a complete version with English subtitles on Youtube. These ones are in French. But those who don’t speak Persian or French should be able to follow along just fine.)

While you’re at it, sign the petition demanding that the government of Iran free Panahi.

He’s a Superstar

I got to see Roy Ayers in concert here in Sydney last week. My review was just published on inthemix:

Roy Ayers @ The Basement, Sydney, 20/2/11

I had issues with the show, as you’ll see from the review, but still it was a treat. Since then, I’ve naturally been revisiting Roy’s old tunes.

Here’s a classic, one of those primal creations that sounds as fresh now as it must have back in the day, thanks to its bulletproof groove and off-kilter, melancholy orchestration:

I love these kinds of Youtube videos, where you just watch the record spinning on the turntable. Having spent a lot of my life staring at records while they play, I’m right there with the fans who upload this stuff.

“We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” is from one of my favorite albums: Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s He’s Coming, released in 1971. I first got it when I was living in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. I was broke, and trying to make it, baby – and I can’t explain how much its lyrics and atmosphere meant to me. The sound of it takes me right back to the smell of the brownstone I lived in, the sound of the kids playing and the roosters crowing in the back.

I love the non-sequitur quality of these lines:

Days have passed
And all the queen bee’s drones are dying

I don’t think Roy anticipated colony collapse disorder. I’m not sure what it means, it’s just a funky lyric. I was disappointed when he left that line out of the song last week – as if it would have been too weird for the occasion.

Here’s another one from the same album. Righteous lyrics, an arrangement that just keeps building, an incredible bassline. Try to listen to “Ain’t Got Time” without feeling something:

“What war?”

By the way, the “he” in the album’s title refers to that he. You know, the one who makes the whole thing happen. Same goes with “He’s a Superstar”:

I was listening to this the other day, and got to wondering, what happened to this kind of music, this kind of message? I take it for granted that gospel is a part of soul, but now if someone released a song like this, it’d be a big deal. But back then you got direct affirmations of faith in the music of Stevie Wonder, the O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield, all the heavy hitters. That is some of the best music ever recorded, documenting a profoundly urgent epoch in American history, revolutionizing black culture and inspiring people everywhere – and it was powered by faith. So what the hell happened?

Oh, well. It’s a question for another day. By the way, on the same album, Ayers/Ubiquity do an instrumental version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar, which was still new at that time. Maybe that’s where Ayers got the concept for “He’s a Superstar.” In general I don’t have much to say about the phenomenon of that musical, as I’m not too familiar with it. (I don’t really do showtunes. Sorry.)

Moving on to another era, can’t forget about this one, probably my favorite of all:

There’s no other record like it. How can I wax poetic about that percussion, that bassline, the tension between the sweetness of the track and the weird drama of the layered vocals? Just listen – and try to keep from knocking over stuff in your living room while dancing.

Like much of  Roy Ayers’ music, “Running Away” was ahead of its time, or out of time – I’d say 1977 seems unbelievable, but I think it would seem unbelievable no matter what year it came out. Not only does it foreshadow house, but it kind of is house in a way, just as “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” is part and parcel of hip hop. It’s fitting, because Roy went on to record house in the 90s.

Speaking of that, here’s the original version of “Sweet Tears,” which later became a hit when Roy collaborated with Masters at Work/NuYorican Soul on a reworked house version:

Just to be pedantic, the remake:

It’s pretty cheesy – it threatens to collapse into disco house, which was never my thing, and it can’t even come close to matching the smoking-hot vibe of “Running Away” – but I like it anyway.

And just to end things on a completely different note, here’s Roy in electro/R&B/smooth operator/comedian mode in 1984:

Trust me, I wouldn’t post a tune with the phrase “poo poo” in the title if it wasn’t worth your time.