German artist jams Google traffic with trolley full of mobile phones

Weckert calls himself an artist with a focus on the digital world.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Simon Weckert has been tricking Google Maps into thinking there are traffic jams on empty streets by dragging a trolley full of mobile phones around with him.

According to Weckert, the artistic performance, as he calls it, showed Google maps turning red, for traffic jams, on streets where there was no traffic - but where 99 mobile phone signals showed the presence of almost a hundred people.

Only the phones were all in a red children’s trolley he was pulling behind him.

Weckert calls himself an artist with a focus on the digital world and created a video of the stunt with split screens where one of the four screens simultaneously shows a Google map with the virtual traffic jam with the other showing Weckert walking down an empty street.

Weckert called his project #googlemapshacks. Tricking the system with the virtual jam he says meant people avoided the street and highlighted how the mapping service had changed how people interacted with what a map is.

Some of the reactions on his Twitter page read "love this!," "#Berlin-man fools and misleads #Google #Maps" and "wonder if this would work on the M50" in reference to the British motorway north of Gloucester.