Amsterdam RealTime

Untitled-1 copyThis is a pic of  ‘Amsterdam Realtime (2002)’  by Esther Polak and Jeroen Kee. Talk about writing oneself on the earth: these guys gave GPS units to volunteers and monitored their movements, sending data to a central computer every few seconds. The computer mapped the data on a dark screen as points of light. The funniest story about this work is about the smart alec who mapped out his route so that it would resemble a big bird, then walked it, then the technology made the bird appear on the city map. Haven’t found visuals of this, it may be just another urban legend ….

It was painful checking Esther’s  website – painful since she is just SO GOOD, it hurts not being her. I love her use of technology and the austere way she visualises her material. I love her texts, her experiments, all about the work she does.