Creative Synthesis

In the fall of 2000 Jeremy Wood used a GPS receiver to record the holding pattern of an airliner.  The pattern that emerged inspired GPS Drawing, a project that combines remote sensing technology with education, musings on space and scale, and a weird sense of fun.

Participants use their movements to create two basic styles of drawings.  Beginning with a rough idea, some move from point-to-point to create intentional designs, maneuvering to layer symbols over city streets, write words across the landscape, or sketch animals, such as the elephant created in East Sussex.

A second class of sketches relies more directly on the environment and normal movement–recording the downward spirals of skydivers, folks on riding mowers, dogs runningin parks, and the random drifting of inflatable boats.

The idea of GPS drawing has grown since Wood first played around with a receiver as his flight circled the airport.  Models and photographs based on the idea have appeared in exhibits, and Wood was invited to contribute to the University of Minnesota Design Institute’s Else/Where Mapping: New Cartographies of Networks and Territories.  Wood has also developed workshops for schoolchildren and teachers that encourage the examination of scale and the relationship between space and art.

The project as a whole–and particularly the work Wood has done with schools–encourages participants to look critically at their environment as they map out images.  Wood describes his thoughts and experiences while working on a few of the designs, and street photos accompany some of the drawings, but the program needs to more explicitly discuss the experiences of contributors and the ways in which creating the designs shaped their understanding of their interaction with the environment.