So since January 1st, I've been tracking every bike trip I take. I started by creating a slightly ridiculously details vector map of New York and every time I go over a path, the line gets thicker and paler (from 80% upwards) but then I quickly hit white in certain places and started adding yellow to differentiate. The project is by no means finished (I'm planning on tracking it for one year, both in New York and in LA starting in the fall) but here's where it stands as of June 15th at about 5:30.
I found that all the detail was being lost in the big map and so I started zooming in, looking at details and I got intrigued by the idea of creating something more akin to an atlas. The zoomed in pages look less like a map and more like vector-based b&w abstractions so I'm playing around with these ideas. Interspersed between these pages will be highly textural illustrations of things I pass while biking that catch my eye (right now I'm attracted to old buildings that have fallen into disuse but still show a glimmer of their former lives). There will also be handwritten stories about things I see and think while moving through the city that will add more organic elements to what I see as very quiet and cold vector lines.
So yeah, still a work in progress, the colors are not final and there will probably be soft little transition swoops between some of these jagged lines but that's where it's going. Not quite sure what the project is about (I no longer want it to be a PSA about urban biking) but I think it has to do with movement through space and time (that's not a sci-fi reference) and stories that come from urban life. Thoughts/feedback would be wonderful!
