These are some images I was working on last winter and I am about to get back into. I have had the idea for a long time to track my latitude and longitude movements in a more ephemeral media. The track I make through life disappears as soon as it is made, so it seemed appropriate to try to capture light. I attached a small light to the CNC router and ran the program over 16x20in photo paper to catch the trail. There are many kinks to work out with the sequencing of the drawing, exposures, speeds etc. I'll work on it more as winter closes in. I have to work on it at night, so it is easier to black out the studio. As sunset happens earlier and earlier this is easier to manage and still have plenty of time to run the drawings.
I have been struggling for the last few weeks to get this project underway. I am trying to combine some of the visual influences of strip mining and man-made landscape alterations into my latitude and longitude data. These renderings depict the Champaign-Urbana Illinois area over the course of the first six month of living here. Each layer in the stack represents one week and as I record more and more latitude and longitude positions more of the mass is removed/revealed.
