This project began as a plan to document desire paths created by people repeatedly walking through spaces not designed for them. I was interested in how these physical imprints show quiet resistance to planning, and how they reveal preference that cuts across official intention. I started looking in Tucson’s vacant lots, around strip malls, and through residential zones for these signs of movement. But during that process, I became drawn to another kind of trace, the ones left behind not in dirt, but in data. While using Google Street View to scout locations, I started noticing moments where the system broke down or where something didn't align. They felt just as much evidence of people stepping outside the expected path. What followed was the process of collecting these fragments and assembling them into a typology. The project became less about walking itself and more about how movement or silence appears in places that are meant to be neutral and controlled. Each image shows some form of drift or disobedience, whether caused by human behavior, machine failure, or a collision between the two. In their own way, they all break the surface of the system. It’s about paying attention to what slips through what the map doesn’t fully control, what the camera doesn’t quite capture. It’s about the ways people bend space, avoid rules, or exist at the edges of structure without asking for permission. Whether in the dirt or on the screen, these are all desire paths in their own way, signs that someone passed through and left something behind, even if only barely. 
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ReplyDeleteI love this concept of diving into the desire lines walk and doing more research on the pathways. I also love how, instead of actually walking, you use digital walking as a way to walk and see things you might not see when you are there in person. I think it would be cool if you did both digital and in-person, just to find the differences or similarities of the path digitally and in person.
ReplyDeleteHi Gabriel, your concept is strong and I loved how you treated glitches and misalignments as a kind of digital footprint. One thing you could possibly explore is playing with how the images are displayed, maybe having some irregularities in the grid or breaking it in certain places could mirror the feeling of disruption that you're highlighting in the images and text. Great work!
ReplyDeleteHi Gabriel!
ReplyDeleteLove still seeing your work. I wish you were able to create glitches in your own photos, instead of just seeing them on google maps. I think that taking your own photos and adding glitches would really add to this concept as a whole. By creating these glitches yourself for desire lines made out side of electronic glitches.