On May 3, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley collaborated with Google to stage spectacles along Sampsonia Way in the Central Northside for Street View, which displays street-level, still images for select U.S. cities and foreign countries.
The scene Hewlett and Kinsley created -- with the help of real, local people -- makes Sampsonia Way look like the zaniest one-way alley in the city.
On one block there's a parade with the Langley High School marching band and falling confetti. Marathon runners bound down the street elsewhere. A 17th-century sword fight that greets two football fans -- one in Steelers gear, the other in a Browns jersey -- caps the craziness. Like a dog and cat who become friends, they are zapped by a "love laser" (some sort of machine visible to the side) and about to hug.
Google technicians drove a car mounted with digital cameras to capture 360-degree photographs of the scenes.
"Art and technology is and has been a crossroads that we've been involved with for a long time," said Jeffrey Inscho, a public relations manager with the Mattress Factory contemporary art museum that supported the project. "The fact that people can not only view the piece but actually navigate in it and participate in it is something unique, fresh and new."
North Side residents and other volunteers populate the scenes, which debuted Tuesday on the Web. Kinsley and Hewlett were not available for comment.
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