This could be either a large-scale community art project or, if the cheapest route is preferable, some educated guesswork that results in a temporarily diverting animated gif. I’ll describe the former.

Select a geographical area that includes a range of man-made environments such as a grouping of a city, and the mixed dormitory and rural settlements around it. Give everyone – or at least a cross section representative of everyone – a gps tracker or similar. Persuade them to carry the gps tracker with them all day, every day, for a small number of days. Collect all the location information over this period of days and use it to plot a map of the comings and goings of these thousands of individuals.

Each carrier is assigned a point of light and, over a single-shaded map of the area, the data, once processed, should reveal amongst a myriad of hypnotic patterns, the paths of the commuters, from dormitory to CBD and back again, like blood through a heart, the static stars of those who died during the period and the circumscribed school and shopping runs of the suburban mothers.
-- calum, Mar 08 2006

Commutation rhythms, captured with time lapse photogrpahy, are one element of this hypnotic film http://www.koyaanis...s/koyaanisqatsi.php
[DrCurry, Mar 08 2006]

gpsdrawing.com http://www.gpsdrawing.com/
GPS Art Projects
[Minimal, Mar 10 2006]

Cabspotting http://cabspotting.org/
getting there [calum, Apr 10 2006]

Close to baked http://www.mysociet...6/travel-time-maps/
though I can't tell, as being boingboing'd seems to have knocked their site over. [calum, May 26 2006]

So simple -- use mobile phones instead! http://news.bbc.co....ci/tech/7433128.stm
[calum, Jun 05 2008]

Real Time Rome http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/
The clever guys at MIT had a project that looked at movements in Rome... [Jinbish, Jun 05 2008]

Judging by the adverts for "Britain From Above" http://www.bbc.co.uk/britainfromabove/
this looks pretty close to baked. [calum, Aug 08 2008]

Also useful for locating local brothels, gambling dens, and drug purchase points. Irritated spouses would love it.
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Mar 08 2006


//Irritated spouses would love it//

So would the police.
-- skinflaps, Mar 08 2006


Sorta like Koyaanisqatsi, which you might enjoy, if you haven't seen it already.
-- DrCurry, Mar 08 2006


Can I see this as an art form? Love it.+
-- zeno, Mar 08 2006


also handy for tracing alien abductions. + for any artwrok that has random component
-- xenzag, Mar 10 2006


Art, pah!

I think it would interesting to compare with methods used for mobile communicationss planning. There are many mobility models for use with mobile technologies, but I'm sure how they'd stack against a genuine, real life mobility model.
-- Jinbish, Apr 10 2006


Ah. I never thought for a moment that this could have commercial applications, which was pretty short-sighted of me. I'll split the profits with you, 95/5, Jin.
-- calum, Apr 10 2006


How's this haggling malarky meant to work?

94/6?

(10 for that? You must be mad!)
-- Jinbish, Apr 12 2006


I can't find an anno on an idea that I remember making: basically, carry a GPS logger around with you for all your life, then publish all the movements as a sort of diary.

Sort of a similar idea, but for one person, and for longer.
-- Ling, Jun 05 2008



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