the road between us
The road between us exploits the proliferation of geo-localized images on Flickr, constructing fictitious journeys from the position of these images on the world-wide territory. These routes will be integrated like real traces in the already existing multitude.
Our program allows you to choose a place on earth where you want to find a route. In this area, it selects a first shot at random. From that image, it then determines the closest photo, and draws the link that connects them. It continues like this until there are no longer pictures nearby.
The route is also exported to a KML file, viewable in Google Maps or Google Earth.
Once the trails recorded, we send an email to the authors of the photos, thanking them for "their participation in this wonderful ride". We send it to everyone in claiming to be the others, being as a server waiting for the results of these exchanges.
Although they've traveled into the same spaces, the authors don't know each other, and find themselves forced against their will to remember a ride they haven't done.
Faced with these routes that are as micro-narratives, we personally have a hard time imagining that they haven't been together.
We're working right now to adapt the program into a web application, so that everyone can create its own routes. The app was built with Processing.