Bringing Google's ghosts to life: Artist pastes eerie life-size images of pedestrians from Street View at the very spot where they were captured


The artist who brings Google Street View to life by fixing life-size photos of pedestrians caught by Google cameras to the side of buildings has given a glimpse into the way he works.

Paolo Cirio made headlines last year with his project, called Street Ghosts , which involves transferring the blurry images of pedestrians seen on the internet giant's mapping service to the real world.

The Italian artist, who has taken his work to New York, London and Berlin, let a photographer accompany him as he fixed the images to the streets of Brooklyn, New York, at night.



In action: Paolo Cirio has been pictured bringing his 'street ghosts' to life. He finds interesting-looking people on Google Street View then positions photographs of them in the locations where they were captured by Google



Part of the landscape: Once affixed, the 'ghosts' become a normal part of the city landscape, such as this hooded figure pictured in New York's Bedford Avenue

Inspiration: This woman, on Metropolitan Avenue in New York, was another figure who caught Mr Cirio's interest Reminder: He brings a printed picture from Google Street View to the location at night so he can position it as accurately as possible. Quick and easy: He then uses wallpaper paste to fix the figure to the wall Viola!: The figure, wearing sunglasses and carrying her shopping, is now part of the landscape Mr Cirio finds his subjects by clicking around on the Google Street View tall until he finds a figure interesting enough to bring to life. The search engine automatically blurs the faces of people photographed by its cameras - a process which sometimes doesn't work properly - but Mr Cirio says it is 'amazing' how much detail can still be made out.

He then prints and cuts out a life-size photograph of the person, which he carries to the location they were photographed under cover of darkness and fixes to a wall with wallpaper paste. Inconspicuous: This lone figure on North Street in New York was chosen for the Street Ghost treatment Cut-out: Mr Cirio prints and cuts the full-size photographs in advance And paste: The whole process is over in only a couple of minutes The 'ghost' which was captured by Google is then part of the physical landscape - at least until it is taken down. Mr Cirio keeps a map on his website showing pictures of all the ghosts he has placed and their location.

The artworks are often gone by the next evening, but in some cases have remained up for months. Occasionally Google will send out a car to update their maps and will capture the 'ghost' and bring the process full circle. He works at night in order to escape the attention of the authorities, who could consider his work to be vandalism, even though he chooses locations for the 'interventions' which tend to feature graffiti already. Furtive: Paolo Cirio works at night because the authorities could consider his work to be vandalism However, as well as offering a quirky insight into the interaction between the internet and the physical world, for Mr Cirio, his work also bears an important political point. By placing the photos back into reality, he says he is drawing attention to how Google took the images of people in the first place without asking. In a statement on website he said: ' I exposed the specters of Google’s eternal realm of private, misappropriated data: the bodies of people captured by Google’s Street View cameras, whose ghostly, virtual presence I marked in Street Art fashion. Spooky: The artist behind a series of spooky street art installations has explained how he came to be inspired by mapping tool Google Street View. One of his installations at 214 Lafayette Street in New York is pictured

Him: Paolo Cirio was mesmerized by the search engine's photographs of strangers, often blurry, permanently pictured going about their daily business. Ebor Street in London is pictured

Who: For his project, Street Ghosts, he printed life-size photographs of the strange specters and plastered them on the very spot the initial image was taken - allowing them to 'haunt' the real world. Dircksenstraße / Rochstraße is pictured in Berlin 'These images do not offer details, but the blurred colors and lines on the posters give a gauzy, spectral aspect to the human figures, unveiling their presence like a digital shadow haunting the real world. 'As the publicly accessible pictures are of individuals taken without their permission, I reversed the act: I took the pictures of individuals without Google’s permission and posted them on public walls. 'The obscure figures fixed to the walls are the murky intersection of two overlain worlds: the real world of things and people, from which these images were originally captured, and the virtual afterlife of data and copyrights, from which the images were retaken.'



Crossing: 'This ready-made artwork simply takes the information amassed by Google as material to be used for art,' Mr Cirio explains. 80 East Houston Street in New York is pictured

Imagined: 'By remixing and reusing this material, I artistically explore the boundaries of ownership and exposure of this publicly displayed, privately-held information about our personal lives.' 80 East Houston Street in New York is pictured

She: His project has taken him all over the world, including Mexico, China, London and Brazil, always exploring the boundaries between public and private. A London scene is pictured

Following: 'Ghostly human bodies appear as casualties of the info-war in the city,' Mr Cirio says. 214 Lafayette Street on Google is pictured left, and in real life, right

