Shared Distance: The Poetry of Data in Collaborative GPS Visualisations

Location based mobile applications are becoming increasingly popular and visualisation of GPS tracks increasingly familiar in TV programs such as ‘Britain from Above’ (2008). Networked locative technologies, such as GPS-enabled smart phones, can bring about a sense of presence at a distance or virtual proximity (Urry 2002) and consequently life in a city is made up of a complex set of flickering attentions to proximate and distant interactions (Elliot & Urry 2010). This paper explores how the artists work Shared Distance by South and Speed makes fragile and flickering portraits of connected groups of people using GPS data.