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"Google's Street View-style cameras are giving Googlers one more thing to ogle at. That's right, not just the great outdoors \u2014 now you can scope out museums, too.\nWith the Google Art Project, you can take a gallery or collection tour and peruse through more than 45,000 pieces of art by approximately 10,000 artists. Google's 15-lens camera contraptions \u2014 the ones used for Street View \u2014 are again to thank; however, because of certain copyright restrictions, some paintings are blurred.\nSEE ALSO: Travel Through the Gal\u00E1pagos Islands via Google Street View\n\nOne artist, Phil Thompson of the UK, has decided to flip the censorship on its head and create meta art out of the blurred boxes. Taking screenshots from Art Project, Thompson sends his foggy findings to an oil-painting production company in China, where the nebulous pics are then turned into physical works of art by its artists. \n\n\"I am really interested in glitches; the moments when things fail and reveal themselves,\" Thompson tells Wired.\n\"The Internet provides a huge amount of material which otherwise would be unattainable to most people,\" he adds. \"It has led to a lot of creativity \u2014 whether it is with memes or highly skilled Photoshop jobs \u2014 everyone is now able to create and edit images.\"\nThompson's project, titled Copyrights, essentially allows users to view in a physical space the blurred images they would otherwise meet on their screens. He says he appreciates how reality and the virtual world can intertwine. (An example of Google's blurry construction is below; more images of Thompson's project are available here.)\n\nIn terms of what's actually beneath the smeared pixels, Thompson has been able to put his finger on a few of the paintings' identities, but he wants the blurred frames to exist as new works of art. The mystery is only one facet of the project's intrigue: Thompson also notes that the role of Chinese painters-for-hire complements his work because Google's relationship with China exists with censorships in place.\nThompson is represented by XPO Gallery in Paris and will have a solo show there Nov. 21.\nWhat other artistic inventions have you seen playing off Google or others? Share them with us in the comments.\nImages courtesy of Phil Thompson\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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