How did you come up with the idea for making an animated geoglyph? Why did you choose to make a walking figure? What does it mean to you?

Last year I began my honors thesis, which is series of conceptually-based animations. As I investigated the history and process of animation, I decided to concentrate on animation as it is integrated with new technology. As a part of this series, inspired by a class called “computing in the wild”, I decided to use GPS technology.

Familiar with the work of C5 group, and the website gpsdrawing.com, which showcases drawings people make with their GPS units – elephants, snails, spiders, text, etc, I realized nobody had made an animation from these drawings, and that each drawing on the site could potentially be one frame of animation.

As far as the “wild” part of the “computing in the wild” class, we had a weekend planned at the White Mountain Research Station in which we would conduct our experiments. I liked the idea that walking these frames off in a remote location would be a performance in itself.

The shape of the animation was also shaped by the idea of a performance. The drawing was to be made from tracking a walk, so why not make the drawing be of what I was doing? Furthermore, the icon of animation itself is the walk cycle – precedented by Muybridge and made famous by Mickey Mouse. Also from a technical standpoint, walk cycles are relatively easy to make.

Finally, I knew about the Nazca geoglyphs and the Blythe geoglyph, the latter of which I could use as a template when I would go “into the wild.” I place “into the wild” in quotations, because I executed my first GPS animation in downtown San Diego, using the confines of the city grid as my guide.

This urban precedent really influenced my design and provided a pleasant contrast to the movements of my “natural” geoglyph. The urban walk cycle ended up resembling an Atari character, while the “natural” geoglyph was much more free-form and organic.” From EDGERIDERS: Christin Turner.