A real shame you can't click on the images to get to the location. But.. this, and the general quality of some of the shots, makes me wonder.. are these all from Google Street View or is it an art project that includes photos doctored to look like Google Street View? (Which wouldn't necessarily detract from it, IMHO.)
They are all either Google Street View or equivalents (Yandex in Russia for example).
The curator of this site is, I think, scouring several other websites which collect and display interesting Street Views, picking out those which are exceptional, then posting them on his own site without the location data or a source. Probably in the name of 'art'.
I know this because many of the images on 9-eyes were originally displayed on my own site, so I know where most of them are.
First picture (and some others) is in Brazil. Those running are street sales people ("camelôs") running from police because they sell pirate stuff (mostly sunglasses and movie DVDs). Police sometimes do the "rapa", it is like a "sweeping" to aprehend ilegal merchandising. So the camelos run with their merchandising and come back later that or other day to the same place to keep selling.
Pretty common in most non-OECD countries! I saw it a lot personally in Africa, carpet full of small items like sunglasses as you say, when the police comes they take the 4 corners of the carpet, turn it into a big sack o' stuff and haul ass! Shopping resumes at another corner :)
I wonder if part of the reason is because the direct source was provided, it'd be not only much easier for Google itself to find and censor the image, but to prevent mobs of Internet users trying to "doxx" or otherwise prank businesses/residents of that location.
Obviously, Google probably doesn't need much help in performing a reverse image search across its own street imagery. However, the additional bad PR that comes from anonymous users targeting a locale would most definitely be a strong incentive for them to censor a particular Street View image.
Which doesn't seem much like an art project. And is somewhere here in Mexico (the vehicle has 066 which is Mexican 911).
So while I'm not sure about all, I guess some of those are real.
It would be nice if they'd list the location but this is a great collection nevertheless. Looks like Google Car drove into some fairly hostile territory at times...
That one of the injured cow (appears to have been struck by a vehicle and had its legs broken in several places) trying desperately to make it off the road is heartbreaking.
Jon Rafman is a pretty successful contemporary artist who mainly recontextualizes material from dark corners of the Internet (4chan, etc.) The last show of his I attended featured silicon dolls covered in sharpy that you could play with (they were pre-lubed) and elaborate reproductions of troll caves. Here's an article about the darknet in art and music, which mentions Jon and others: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/23/musicians-embra.... His recent videos are incredible: https://vimeo.com/jonrafman.
Many of my artist friends are working with themes in this area, from fan fiction and chan culture to online poker, infosec, government surveillance, etc.
Some very powerful images, as well as some humorous ones and some that are just interesting! These are pretty impressive finds, I wonder how many people it took to find them and/or how long it took? Some of them I wish they'd included the location, like this one: http://41.media.tumblr.com/201fabddc9a0fc8cb3d923658344e408/...
I don't want to be all like 'look at me, I'm wordly, aww you naive child'. I know, it sucks. But... background is, pretty much everywhere on the planet except a few places for thousands of years.
The statistics on this are absolutely appalling, particularly as violence against women is one of the most under reported events we know of. In short, if the female gender were to have created a religion over the past thousands of years, man would have taken on the role of the devil quite fittingly.
It's true that violence against women is very common and that is one possible explanation for this image. But isn't it possible that these people are just drunk and stumbling over each other? Maybe if someone found this image's location on street view we'd be able to see the couple of frames before and after this one and get better context.
The ethics are interesting, too. Does the Google driver have an obligation to stop and render aid when someone is being mugged, beaten up, or shoved into a car trunk?
Or does the Prime Directive apply? Are you just supposed to drive the car, and having driven by, drive on?
