Today we can observe a general fascination almost narcissistic regarding the accumulation of personal records and traces of daily life : photographic documentation, videos, GPS tracks ...
New technologies allow the geo-positioning of our photos to reflect the exact spot where we went (nearly two millions are already available on the net). And if the GPS recorders aren't precise enough, it's easy to correct its tracks by using tools such as Google Maps for being the closest to the reality of the routes.

Process /

The road between us exploits this proliferation of geo-localized images on Flickr, constructing fictitious journeys from the position of these images on the world-wide territory. These routes will be integrated like real traces in the already existing multitude.
Our program allows you to choose a place on earth where you want to find a route. In this area, it selects a first shot at random. From that image, it then determines the closest photo, and draws the link that connects them. It continues like this until there are no longer pictures nearby.

You can then view the route, the photographs that make it up (one by one or in a slideshow), as well as the avatars and the names of the authors of these images.
The route is also exported to a KML file, viewable in Google Maps or Google Earth.

Once the trails recorded, we send an email to the authors of the photos, thanking them for their participation in this wonderful ride. We send it to everyone in claiming to be the others, being as a server waiting for the results of these exchanges.

Although they've traveled into the same spaces, the authors don't know each other, and find themselves forced against their will to remember a ride they haven't done.
Faced with these routes that are as micro-narratives, we personally have a hard time imagining that they haven't been together.

We already started to create routes and you can view some examples here.

We're working right now to adapt the program into a web application, so that everyone can create its own routes. The app was built with Processing, using the proXML library. Flickr offers the use of its databases with this API.

The road between us is a project under creative commons license (cc 2008).

Installation /

The physical installation of the road between us consists of three parts :

- an interface allowing viewers to create and save their own journeys.
- a video-projection of 3D routes with Google Earth.
- a posting on the entire surface of a wall of the avatars of the authors, printed in large format .