The Road Between Us
interactive installation & online flickr/googleMap mashup software |
with Emilie Brout.
date : 2008 - 2009
medium : home-made software (processing/Java), flickr API, googleEarth, computer, video-projector, touchscreen
shown at : Version Beta, Centre pour l'Image Contemporaine | Sombres Desseins/Dark Designs, Maison d'Ailleurs | Mulhouse 008, Parc des Expositions | Hacker Space Festival, tmp/lab/
website : http://theroadbetweenus.net
The Flickr website offers an increasing number of geo-localized photos. Although they were taken by different authors at different times, several millions of images already come together on the globe.
The road between us consists in the generation of fictitious GPS routes from the position of the images in space, in realtime. These imaginary journeys are viewable online or on Google Earth in a kind of spatial 3D slideshow. We discover the route itself, the photographs that compose it, as well as the avatars and the names of the authors. Although they have traveled the same spaces, the authors don’t know each other ; we personnaly have a hard time to imagine that they haven’t been together.
These journeys, which are micro-narratives, micro-utopias, are generated iteratively : each photograph is chosen based on its proximity to the previous one, and the travel ends when there is no more image close enough.
This is the space, by the sequence of places and portraits, which ensures the consistency of the whole.
Complete description at theroadbetweenus.net
