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How to create GPS art by walking a predetermined route on a map
In the wake of Erik Nordenankar’s extravagantly ambitious yet unbelievable Earth-sized self-portrait that turned out to be a hoax, many people are searching the internet for examples of actual GPS art — proving that the idea is too good to let go of that easily.
We found an artist in Finland who does exactly this — Antti Laitinen, who walks around a forest or town, following his GPS reading, and tries his best to stay on the line he drew beforehand on a map that traces the countours of his head and face:
These pictures represent the different steps of the process:
One. The face is laid on a map of some geographical area — a forest, say, or a town — with an art application like Photoshop. Print this out. The above picture is Laitinen’s face on top of Luukkaa Recreation Area in Nuuksio National Park, near Helsinki.
Two. Map and GPS in hand, set off to walk the route, as best you can. This is not as easy as it sounds; a big enough area could make your contour around 20km long (as in the case of Laitinen’s), and buildings, bogs, trees and traffic will conspire to wreck the smoothness of the line. (Dealing with this is probably going to be the funnest part of the whole process for you.)
Three. After doing this in a few areas, download the data from your GPS and each of them on top of each other in some graphics application. In the third image above, Laitinen combined eight of his ambling portraits — from Athens, Gateshead, Helsinki, Kielder Forest, Luukkaa Forest, Newcastle, Oulunkylä Forest, and Pointburn Woods. You can see how, though one may be almost unrecognizable, add a few together and they start to make sense.
The results are wobbly, but that’s part of the fun. This is a simple thing to do, though it requires time and patience. You could also do it by car, given a big enough area and enough roads. Just get out a map, and start planning!
