Description :

The Flickr website offers an increasing number of geo-localized photos. Although they were taken by different authors at different times, several millions of images already come together on the globe.

The road between us consists in the generation of fictitious GPS routes from the position of the images in space, in realtime. These imaginary journeys are viewable online or on Google Earth in a kind of spatial 3D slideshow. We discover the route itself, the photographs that compose it, as well as the avatars and the names of the authors. Although they have traveled the same spaces, the authors don’t know each other ; we personnaly have a hard time to imagine that they haven’t been together.







These journeys, which are micro-narratives, micro-utopias, are generated iteratively : each photograph is chosen based on its proximity to the previous one, and the travel ends when there is no more image close enough.
This is the space, by the sequence of places and portraits, which ensures the consistency of the whole.



Process :

The installation version of The Road Between Us is constitued by two screens: one touch, where you can select an area on the earth, and the other displaying the result in Google Earth.
The touchscreen displays green dots representing the position of the photographs available on the globe. The edges of the seas, often very well documented, permits us to quickly recognize the outlines of the continents.
One can also observe unequal concentrations photography. The interface allows to choose a place on earth where one wants to discover a route.







In this area, the software selects a first shot at random. From this image, it then determines the nearest photo within a certain radius, and draw the line that connects them. It continues until there is no longer picture nearby. The trip is saved in KML format, which allows to control all camera movements.
The result is shown in Google Earth in "visit" mode, which retrace the route and stops a time to each image, creating a dialogue between the 3D space and the photographic space.







An online beta version of the software is available here : http://theroadbetweenus.net/soft

The Road Between Us was built with the open-source software processing, exploits the Flickr API and controls Google Earth.

The Road Between Us was created by Emilie Brout & Maxime Marion (cc 2008), with support from the Ensad Lab - FdM