Google Street View no longer limits itself to streets and squares.
The little figure can enter buildings too.
I tried it.
Embodied by the orange Street View avatar, I stepped inside the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea.
Immediately I became entangled in an installation.
A hall filled entirely with mirrors, large shards everywhere. On the ceiling. On the floor.
I navigated back and forth. Turned in full circles.
When I tried to find an exit, there wasn’t one.
Only a white door marked STAFF ONLY.
I tried again, faster this time, more systematic.
I raced along the mirrors, combed through the space carefully.
Again, the only possible exit seemed to be that STAFF ONLY door.
I tried to open, the software refused.
What to do?
I sat down quietly.
I noticed something.
None of the mirrors reflected a person. Not me. Not a camera. Not even a ghostly documentation of my digital presence.
No one was there.
I was trapped in a room in which I myself was absent.
I didn’t need a door: I wasn’t there.
Things got even stranger. A few days later I thought to return, hoping to discover the identity of the maker of this installation. I’d come to think that this ‘being there without being there’ might have been intended, that it had been a form of internet art I hadn’t recognized at the time.
Well, we’ll never know.
The mirror room is gone.
That same link that got me into the mirrorspace now leads simply to the museum lobby.
Past the reception desk you can digitally walk — just like that — into the many galleries.
And back out again.
Rita Hoofwijk is creating a new work that will be presented in September 2026 in two locations in Korea: at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and at the Gwangju Biennale. But it isn’t September yet. Now, in March, Rita travels to Korea to visit the site from which the work will emerge.