I find Google Maps a blend of the useful and the creepy. Point me in the right direction, thank you. But I needn't have close-up photographs of every few feet of road along the way.

Google's Street View adds this extra layer of mapping, as it aims to let users "explore the world through images." I love exploring the world through images. I love photography - personal and public. I love photojournalism. I love film. But Google Street View seems like a very different sort of visual exploration to me. Less expressive. More mechanical. Creepy.

Google's Street View vehicles carry cameras and GPS equipment, shooting pictures as they drive through cities, streets, national parks, trails, countryside. The images captured by Street View are limited to what can be recorded "in public" by Google's vans, cars, and bicycles travel, but many people, particularly in Europe, have balked nonetheless at what they've seen as invasive surveillance and storage of personal data.

Google's animation promoting the service is eerily absent of people. A robot made of building blocks travels around a city made of building blocks (He does, however, obscure the license plate of a car made of building blocks.)

As the Street View vehicles have traveled, they've recorded more than just streets and buildings and trees. They've captured crimes in progress and a couple's first kiss. (And apparently they've recorded traffic over open WiFi, but that's a different story.)

"We like to think of Street View as being the last zoom layer on the map," says Google, "when you've zoomed all the way in you find yourself virtually standing on the street."

Sometimes when you've zoomed all the way in, you find Horse Boy, of course. Sometimes you just get posers. Sometimes you get full-blown street theatre, as with Street with a View, a project that "introduces fiction, both subtle and spectacular, into the doppelganger world of Google Street View." The group staged scenes and performances when the Google Street View car passed by.

These performances draw attention to the passing Street View vehicles. Arguably they disrupt the staid and benign map view that Google claims it's undertaking. These performances not only highlight the act of surveillance but also challenge the "real" and "natural" images that the Street View captures.

Currently Google's Street View is mapping a dozen or so countries, across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. To find a car near you, go here. And perform something memorable.