Artist Creates Virtual Traffic Jam on Google Maps With a Wagon Full of 99 Smartphones

Google Map Hacks by Simon Weckert

Berlin-based artist Simon Weckert is fascinated by the digital world and its impact on humanity. With his performance Google Map Hacks, Weckert plays with the intersection of real and virtual worlds. By strolling around with a wagon filled with 99 cell phones, the artist generates virtual traffic jams on Google Maps and creates an intriguing juxtaposition between the physical and digital world.

The act itself took almost a year of preparation, with Weckert slowly collecting low-cost smartphones and convincing friends to lend theirs for the cause. In publishing the work to coincide with the fifteenth birthday of Google Maps, Weckert looks to remind us of how this technology has seeped into our daily lives. Car sharing services, food delivery services, and dating apps like Tinder wouldn't be the same without Google Maps. As Weckert points out, “all of these apps function via interfaces with Google Maps and create new forms of digital capitalism and commodification. Without these maps, car sharing systems, new taxi apps, bike rental systems, and online transport agency services such as Uber would be unthinkable.”

A video of the performance shows what's happening online and on the street in real time. As Weckert slowly rolls his wagon across a near-empty street, Google Maps follows along with a red line. This traffic jam, caused by the phones on the wagon, instantly has a real-life impact. One can imagine commuters and delivery drivers avoiding these streets in an effort to bypass what they see as a traffic jam.

Performance About Art and Technology

By hacking the system, Weckert is the one who's actually in control. With this simple act, the German artist proves how easy it can be for a single person to manipulate this seemingly sophisticated system. Weckert hopes that through Google Map Hacks, people will start thinking about how this technology has impacted their lives and begin to question the motives behind its utility.

“With its Geo Tools, Google has created a platform that allows users and businesses to interact with maps in a novel way,” Weckert tells My Modern Met. “This means that questions relating to power in the discourse of cartography have to be reformulated. We can safely say that digitalization has opened up the mapping sector, which was once dominated by the state. Instead of leading to increased democratization, this has resulted in fragmentations. Economic interests appear to have replaced state and military interests: Google uses its maps to open up new markets, to collect more data and to profit from the online platforms which use Google Maps as their basis.”

Simon Weckert filled a wagon with 99 smartphones to play havoc with traffic on Google Maps.

Wagon Filled with Smartphones

Watch how his movements have an effect on the street congestion Google maps displays.

Simon Weckert: Website

My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Simon Weckert.

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Jessica Stewart

Jessica Stewart is a Contributing Writer and Digital Media Specialist for My Modern Met, as well as a curator and art historian. Since 2020, she is also one of the co-hosts of the My Modern Met Top Artist Podcast. She earned her MA in Renaissance Studies from University College London and now lives in Rome, Italy. She cultivated expertise in street art which led to the purchase of her photographic archive by the Treccani Italian Encyclopedia in 2014. When she’s not spending time with her three dogs, she also manages the studio of a successful street artist. In 2013, she authored the book 'Street Art Stories Roma' and most recently contributed to 'Crossroads: A Glimpse Into the Life of Alice Pasquini'. You can follow her adventures online at @romephotoblog.
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