an invitation to participate in
Walking to Work
5th to 9th July 2010

A performative 78 mile walk from Huddersfield to The Experimental Society conference in Lancaster. The walker will use GPS technology to broadcast her location, allowing a remote audience to follow her progress through the hills of Yorkshire and Lancashire. In return, their locations will also be visible as they virtually accompany her on the walk. The liveness of the connection and the lack of detail about the walkers experience invite participants to imagine the action, and reflect on the meanings of distance through this experimental software.

Plans for the walk are exhibited in the Peter Scott Gallery and will be joined by an annotated map after the conference.

You are invited to follow the walk through the iPhone application ‘comob net’ (www.comob.org.uk) and on twitter

iPhone
Download the free iphone app ‘comob net’ from the app store. Select ‘settings’, then enter a username and the group name ‘W2W’.

Turn ‘show names’ on, ‘proximity sensor’ off, choose how to see the visualisation (‘satellite’ is recommended), and select ‘all’ which will draw connections between your location and every other participant. Return to ‘map view’. You should now see everyone who is viewing the walk from a distance and Jen with her name displayed as ‘JenWalking’.

By participating in this work your username and location will be viewed by other participants.

Please note that we are still working on an OS4 version. If you have upgraded your OS the application will still work but you will have to double click the screen to zoom in and ‘Zoom to Group’ will allow you to zoom out.

Twitter
Follow ‘walking_to_work’ to read Jen’s messages or use #JenWalking before your messasge to join the discussion.