Tags: Flickr, geo, geotagging, google-earth, google-maps, gps, invader, locative, map, mapping, photo, space-invader, street-art, vienna, yuan.cc
Geotagged Flickr photos in Google Earth via Yuan.cc (maps.yuan.cc/kml.php)
Last year I picked up a cheap GPS unit just for fun, which I have since used to collect GPS traces that I have yet to use for anything useful. I find the whole idea of geotagging quite fascinating, but have never built any applications using it.
Currently I’m in Vienna as artist-in-residence at the MuseumsQuartier, and so I’ve been taking quite a few pictures and putting them on Flickr as documentation. By accident I have met the street artist Space Invader, who is currently here “invading” Vienna. He puts up space invader mosaics in public places, and then documents them in the form of a map. This activity mixes a lot of interesting topics: Urban space, street art, locative media, psychogeography etc. So of course I thought this was a perfect chance to put geotagging to the test.
So far my activities have been those of an end-user rather than a developer. I put pictures on Flickr and geotag them with this excellent bookmarklet. Almost all my Vienna pictures are geotagged, for examples see Invader #1 and Invader #2.
Once tagged, it would be useful to be able to browse these images in a geographical intergace. Yuan.cc is a home-brewed site that allows you to sign in to your Flickr account and see your geotagged pictures on Google Maps. If you “sync” your pictures they get added to the Yuan.cc database, in which case you can browse them with Google Earth. You will also be able to see all other pictures in the database at a given location, with thumbnails and links back to Flickr.
During my residency I hope to be able to document all the Invaders that get put up in Vienna, complete with geotags.
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