Robert Frankle

Description

Park St was realised as part of the project you are here during a residency at Islington Mill, Salford, England. It is a reflection on disjunction between time and place, by way of a glitch in Google Street View. It examines the anomaly in Street View and uses it as a vehicle to examine urban transformation, specifically the post-industrial landscape of Salford, England.

While downtown Salford is redeveloped, the street plan as well has undergone modifications. Near Islington Mill, an old street was integrated in 2014 into a new housing development. However, for a brief period, the street continued to remain on the Google Maps and Street View, creating via a glitch, an error, a unique document of the rapidly transforming city.

Negotiating Street View in January 2015 resulted in a situation where a missing street was indicated on Google maps but was apparently no longer in Street View. In fact, upon trying to enter it, the user was "magically" transported into the recent past to view the street as it was last photographed for Street View, a bit like a science fiction portal into the past. This enabled the user to have a glimpse of the quarter as it was in the recent past and also to see views of the entrances to the "missing" street as it was "before" and "after". Street View provided in this way concrete evidence of the neighbourhood's transformation. As of February 2015, the missing street, Park St, no longer appeared in Street View.