Resisting the Algorithm: Tara Kelton’s Guided Tour

Guided Tour is a series of videos by Tara Kelton, made with screenshots of popular tourist sites in India taken from the Street View feature on Google Maps. The work reveals human camera “handlers” assisting Google Maps’ cameras as they documented sites like the Taj Mahal, Mysore Palace and the Gateway of India. Presenting a unique coming together of global image platforms like Google and the local economy of tourism in these places, these videos appear to reproduce a kind of “glitch” of familiarity, in the otherwise objective and impersonal apparatus of documentation.

Google Street View, as a technology, is attempting to extensively document public spaces around the world through manually operated cameras. It presents a walk-through experience of these spaces to the users of their software. This kind of three-dimensional mapping requires the use of special equipment—usually carried by official Google Maps cars which drive around with a mounted 360-degree camera. However, recently, Google has also announced new features and applications that allow individual users to upload 360-degree visuals to Google Street View through their smartphones. Interestingly, the Google Street View project has been repeatedly rejected by the Indian government. The company is allowed to document only public monuments and landmarks through their technology, with the government citing reasons of national security and privacy concerns.

As such, Kelton’s project documents and reflects on the “view” of India projected through these monuments, and the contentious relationship between the multiple stakeholders of this view—the Indian state, Google, local tour guides and visitors, as well as the global audience of these images. Google Street View, for instance, operates in a manner such that there is a latent attempt to project these images as anonymous. It erases the identities of the camera technicians/ citizen photographers, as well as the viewers of these images. However, these photographs document real locations, with real people, from a specific moment in time. Kelton’s Guided Tour highlights these anonymous bodies. By extracting and editing the images, Kelton centrally embeds individual narratives into Google’s memory of these iconic sites. For instance, everyone visiting the Taj Mahal—from the comfort of their computer screens—comes into direct contact with the security guard in the video who acts as a “guide.” A familiarity is established through space, time and encoded data. Despite all attempts to make it invisible, the guide’s perspective is present and alive—embodying a refusal to blend into globalised, algorithmic regimes of image-making.

^{Guided Tour – Gateway of India. (2014. Video. Forty-Four Seconds.)}

^{While the viewer on Google Street View is presented with an interactive, navigable map of the Gateway of India, what is hidden from view are the technicians operating the car and cameras. Upon closer inspection, one can notice a man guiding the car through the street in the centre of the frame.}

^{Guided Tour – Mysore Palace. (2017. Video. Three Minutes Seven Seconds.)}

^{The Indian Government’s regulation allowing Google Street View to map only public monuments is a nationalistic move, in response to the globalising force of large technology corporations like Google. International (as well as national) audiences are permitted to view these celebrated locations virtually, but are kept from exploring the streets of India in the same manner.}

^{Guided Tour – Taj Mahal. (2019. Video. One Minute Thirty-Four Seconds.)}

^{The Taj Mahal is one of the many national historic sites available as “guided tours” on Google’s Street View platform. These guided tours include textual information about the site, along with the actual footage of the place and the ability to walk around in it.}

To read more about other works made using Google Street View images from India, please click here.

All works by and courtesy of Tara Kelton.