Kenta Murakami

Art History Theories and Methodologies

Dr Lisa Ashe
Jon Rafman: Experiencing the Sublime in Google Street View
As people interact more and more through the mediation of virtual avatars
(for some people, on some days, this may even be the majority of their
interactions), its difficult to say whether the real world can still be considered
more real than that of the virtual. A proficiency in navigating interfaces and utilizing
programs has become more valuable in our culture than an attentiveness to nature,
and for much of us, our presence online has become as important as our selfpresentation in real life. The artist Jon Rafmans series of screen shots from Google
Street View titled 9-Eyes explores such transitions between real and virtual spaces
and the intuitiveness with which his audience moves between the two. Rafmans
work operates within this gap, challenging the limits of his viewers faculty of
imagination in a way that suggests a potential for an experience of the sublime
within a virtual landscape.
Rafmans interest in Google Maps seems inevitable. The ambition of the
project is entirely unprecedented (its level of simulation is reminiscent of Borges
allegory of simulation discussed by Baudrillaud) 1, and the amount of time and
brainpower invested in the projects development is simply incomprehensible. Yet as
god-like as Google seems, it remains one of the most familiar and banal interfaces
with which we interact. In house searching for the summer my friends intuitively
look to Street View to scope out perspectives; my mom, who lives in Tokyo, often
1 Baudrillard, Jean. "Precession of Simulacra." In Art After Modernism: Rethinking
Representation. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984.

walks her day trips on Street View before leaving the house. Places shes never
been feel a bit more familiar when shes seen them earlier in the day on her laptop.
As one can see, Google has tasked itself with organiz[ing] the worlds information

and mak[ing] it universally accessible and useful. In undertaking this immense

responsibility, theyve famously promised to do no evil yet, its hard to say that
theyve done this without question2. Although its far from intentional, Google Street
View has created a representation of our world an objective one at that that is
laced with ideology like any other. Not unlike the passages couverts of Paris
famously described in Walter Benjamins Arcades Project, Googles world is a
commercial one3. Users traverse the space in order to conduct business or to
consume, and the realm Google presents only goes as far as the streets. While
nature can only be found where there is commerce, one can now enter and explore
the interiors of stores around the globe.
Yet the objectivity of Googles methods allows these ideologies to show
through. Rafmans wandering, not unlike the wanderings of the Parisian flneur
described by Benjamin, present a world littered with people on the margins 4.
Prostitutes, gangsters, and panhandlers find themselves scattered throughout the
worlds streets while the wealthy are hidden away in office buildings and suburban
homes. The subjects Rafman chooses to document are intentional, for he believes

2 Rafman, Jon. "IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View." ArtFCity.
http://www.artfagcity.com/2009/08/12/img-mgmt-the-nine-eyes-of-google-street-view/
(accessed April 25, 2014).

3 Harmann, Maren. Technologies and Utopias: The Cyberflanuer and the Experience
of being Online. Berlin: Nomos Publishers, 2001.
4 Ibid.

that the more marginal, the more ephemeral the culture is, the more fleeting

the object[,] the more it can actually reflect and reveal culture at large 5. In
the case of Google this seems to hold true, for the fleeting moments of
accident, death, and destitution are rendered truly momentary by censorship.
Rafmans excursions typically follow the paths of the Street View cars as posted
online, meaning he or his assistants are often the first to see the images (as the
photographs are taken by a robotic camera); and, as Google takes down any image
that might distract from its products use, they are often of the few that see the
images within their original environment at all 6. In this sense Rafmans work
functions as a sort of archive, a documentation of hyper-temporal, privately
produced cultural objects that are valued on their rapid obsolescence 7.
Not unlike the tradition of street photographers before him, Rafman seeks
what Henri Cartier-Bresson titled the decisive moment. But unlike the father of
photojournalism, the compositions Rafman captures dont exist for a fraction of a
second8. They exist in a slowly refreshed world of mechanically captured still
images, a seamlessly stitched panorama that exists publically for anyone with

5 Stephen Froese, Jon Rafman. "Jon Rafman." Pin-UP: Magazine for Architectural
Entertainment: Pin-Up, 2014.
6 Staley, Willy . "Poaching Memories from Googles Wandering Eye." The 6th Floor:
Eavesdropping on the Times Magazine.
http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/poaching-memories-from-googles-wanderingeye/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=3
(accessed April 25, 2014).

7 Mana, Galit . "Jon Rafman." Frieze magazine, September 1, 2013.

8 Bresson, Henri, and E. riade. The Decisive Moment;. New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1952.

internet access to utilize. The actual photographer of the images was not directed
by an artistic gaze, creating a sense of happenchance to the images Rafman
archives that only elevates their aesthetic aura 9. In viewing the works I cannot help
but feel an ownership of these images; not only do they denote our shared world
(incomprehensible really), they also exist in a world of images which I was privy to.
Its certainly possible that I could have stared through my screen at the exact same
moment, frozen and ready for the taking. In speaking of his series, Rafman has said
that the Street View collections represent our experience of the modern world, and
in particular, the tension they express between our uncaring, indifferent universe
and our search for connectedness and significance 10. Googles virtual world exists
as a commercial tool; wandering the streets I often find the relative lack of people
alarming, and whatever pedestrians do exist are devoid of identity, their faces
blurred by algorithms. This loveless space rings of dystopia, yet Rafman is able to
weed out moments of tension, intimacy, violence, and connectivity. Perhaps even
more than traditional photographers, Rafman is sure to be found exploitative or
otherwise problematic by many, yet his gaze is one of empathy and respect, aiming
to subjectivize the dispassionate online realm.
In this way, 9-eyes falls in line with much of Rafmans work, which often deals
with the crisis over individual subjectivity in the face of the perceived void that is
the internet. In the work Still Life (Beta Male), made in collaboration with musician
Oneohtrix Point Never, the narrator speaks:

9 Staley, "Poaching Memories from Googles Wandering Eye."

10 Rafman, "IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View." ArtFCity

As you look at the screen, it is possible to believe you are gazing into
eternity. You see the things that were inside you. This is the womb. The
original site of the imagination . You can't find your way out of the maze
you are convinced has been solely created for you 11.
The narrator describes a disembodying sense of connectivity with the seemingly
infinite mass of information online that is reminiscent of the language that has been
used to describe the conventions of Romantic landscape painting. As a human
constructed environment, the Internet functions similarly to both historical
representations of landscapes and to the actual lived landscape in which a subject is
embedded. Representations of landscapes within Western art have been seen as a
way to order the world in relation to man (as if we are the subject and the landscape
an object; as if the landscape exists for our consumption), yet online this
representations vastness allows our experience to simultaneously function
phenomenologically, resulting in an indistinct subject-object relation 12. I believe that
in representing this mass of information in the form of a landscape, Rafman invites
the viewer to conceptualize this experience in terms of the sublime. Surely, one
may counter, it has been abstracted, distanced enough that any feeling of terror or
awe would be rendered innocuous. One is more likely to be met with frustrated
boredom instead, the movement through hyperlinked arrows feeling remarkably like
an afternoon spent in heavy traffic. This experience of moving through finite scraps
of virtual space rather aptly demonstrates a concept by literary and cultural theorist
Sianne Ngai termed stuplimity. Kant defined the sublime as an experience in
11 Rafman, Jon. Still Life (Betamale). Online video clip. Youtube. Youtube,
November 2013. Web. 25 April 2014.
12 DeLue,RachaelZiady."TheArtSeminar."InLandscapetheory.NewYork:Routledge,2008..

which an object or situation exceeds the faculty of ones imagination, resulting

initially in a feeling of powerlessness in the face of something greater than oneself.
This is then followed, however, by a feeling of human superiority as the subject
identifies the experience or object as a singular whole, indicating the power of ones
supersensible faculty of reason. Ngais stuplimity affect is a similar revelation of the
limits of our ability to comprehend a vastly extended form, but, by contrast, is
made in an encounter with finite bits and scraps of material in repetition 13.
Experienced most frequently in our interactions with technology (such as moving
through an extensive world in an RPG through tangibly finite spaces), the stuplime
affect is an experience of aesthetic awe intertwined with boredom; an experience
that doesnt ultimately result in affirmation of the human subject, but instead
results in an indefinite state of anxiety14. This state of banality has been termed the
post-internet condition, a state in which the complexity of the internet has
become mundane enough to be taken for granted 15. Although Rafmans use of
Street View draws light to such an experience, he seems to be focusing on
something slightly different: his series serves to mystify the otherwise banal reality
of Googles virtual world, presenting through curation a world as feeling as our own.
David Nye writes of technology as evoking a distinctly American sense of the
sublime, an experience in which one identifies technology as an expansion of
13 Shinckle, Eugnie. " Video Games and the Technological Sublime." Tate.
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/video-games-andtechnological-sublime (accessed April 25, 2014).
14 Ibid.
15 Vierkant, Artie. "The Image Object Post-Internet." JSTCHILLIN.
http://jstchillin.org/artie/pdf/The_Image_Object_Post-Internet_us.pdf (accessed April
25, 2014).

human power and yet simultaneously [as] evoking the sense of individual
insignificance and powerlessness. As an extension and affirmation of reason [and,
simultaneously, as an] expression of a crushing, omnipotent force outside the
self16. When truly confronted with the wealth of information available online it
seems inevitable that one would experience a sensation not unlike vertigo; the
amount of human capital invested in the simplest of softwares is beyond the
capacities of our imagination. But Rafmans series doesnt immediately conjure the
vastness of Googles application or its technologys opacity. Unlike 19 th century
paintings of the sublime meant to replicate the awe evoked by their subjects
Rafmans images create a dialogue of familiarity. Looking through the images I
almost expect to see someone I know, their face blurred as they gaze curiously at a
car crash or a homeless man begging for change. Rafmans world draws its viewer
in.
Much of Rafmans work deals with this connectivity with technology, but often
situations which border the obsessive. Interviews with professional gamers,
explorations of online fetish cultures, live tours through Second Life, and narrative
films made from the game play of video games, Rafmans work challenges the
separation we maintain between subjectivity as it exists through our bodies and
through our screens. In describing the virtual worlds of videogames, Eugnie
Shinkle asserts:
The job of the interface is to maintain [an] alternate reality by supporting a
perceptually coherent gameworld. A properly functioning interface
humanises the technology, acting as an extension of the body and enabling

16 Shinckle, "Video Games and the Technological Sublime."

the technology to function as an affirmation of reason. It sustains a

subjectivity that is posthuman . That of a subject that is seamlessly
articulated with an intelligent machine17.
The notion of the posthuman is described with incredible conviction in N. Katherine
Hayles book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature,
and Informatics. She sees the articulation of subjectivity within virtual spaces, with
its feared erasure of embodiment, as a natural extension of the liberal humanist
subject. She identifies such a conception of the subject with the rational mind,
and although it may possess a body, it is not usually represented as being a
body18. In posthumanist extremes, the body is merely hardware and consciousness
is a replaceable interface, meaning man and technology are capable of, and in fact
already have begun, an inevitable process of mutual entanglement.
Although the virtual realm of Google Street View seems far removed from the
seemingly fictional topics of posthumanist writing (such as artificial life, theoretical
biology, and cyborgs), the product has undeniably become ubiquitous in much of
the developed world. Its innocuousness and accessibility have allowed it to become
banal and familiar. But what happens when this tools utility is foregone for
aesthetic experience, or when the virtual world becomes humanized? Googles
Street View becomes an example of the virtual worlds in which we inhabit with
increasing intuitiveness and acceptance. Rafmans work invites the viewer to
inhabit this world, yet as we embrace the web more and more, incorporate

17 Ibid.
18 Hayles, Katherine. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics,
literature, and informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

ourselves more fully into our subjectivities as played out through social media, in
video games, or simply in navigating our browsers, a sense of anxiety still persists.
Shinkle proposes a contemporary notion of Nyes technological sublime: an
experience in which the subject that has merged with technology is met with a
breaching of this bond, and a return of the technology to the realm of the banal 19.
Typically experienced through glitches or hardware failure, this experience of the
sublime is a moment in which the posthuman recognizes the sublimely immersive
realm in which they were immersed as outside themselves and as a mass-produced
consumer object. The incomprehensible mass of information that makes up such a
worlds software is reduced to an opaque and mysterious set of hardware, and the
posthumans agency within such a system or sense of power over it is called into
question.
In a similar sense, the realism of Rafmans images is undermined by their
materiality (in galleries they are printed large and framed, online the series is an
ongoing tumblr). Intermittent and out of context through the Google compass,
navigation arrows, and street lines; glitches and errors the representationality of
the images is laid bare. One looks at the images and feels immersed within their
world, yet as humanized as this realm is, complete conviction that the world exists
as shown is disallowed (in real life or even online anymore). Rafmans work
straddles the line of the sublime; half immersive and half opaque, the world
challenges our ability to separate ourselves from technology and poses questions
on such a dilemmas repercussions. In looking at the series one cannot help but
conjure thoughts of Rafman and his studio deliriously clicking through the Streets

19 Shinckle, "Video Games and the Technological Sublime."

for days, of the thousands of images that were never documented that no longer
exist, or of the simple ambition of Googles project and the power that that entails.