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Travel

A Photographer Hijacked Google Maps to Create a Clone Army in IKEA

IKEA has never looked so surreal.

IKEA is a magical place, full of affordable furniture, couples fighting, and questionable meatballs. When photographer Alexis Jemus entered a Montreal IKEA, he decided to explore the retail terrain with a fascinating project using Google Maps' virtual teleportation capabilities.

With panorama photography magic, he multiplied himself in an IKEA nearly fifty times, creating a surreal army of Jemuses inside the Street View virtualization of the store. The digital clones ominously stand in fake kitchens, kneel in fake hallways, and sit at fake dining room tables. They look harmless enough, but there’s no way to prove that they’re not plotting world domination.

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Jemus has tons of Street View work logged on his Google+ profile, and it's readily apparent that he’s not afraid to inject a bit of humor into his work. These kinds of map ‘glitches’ often make their rounds through the viral sharing machine, but this time it looks like it wasn’t a glitch, but rather a humorous creative taking advantage of online mapping.

Jemus has also photographed spots like the SkySpa, and even teamed up with Chris Hadfield, the Internet’s favorite Bowie-loving astronaut, to create a photosphere of the International Space Station. Glitches have never been this funny, and IKEA has never been this surreal.

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Skyspa Dix30

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Alexis Jemus (Bulle360)

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Inside the ISS

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Alexis Jemus (Bulle360)