(Left) Negative Long | (Right) Lightning Vierordt

The idea behind Love Letters to Walking Art and Science stems from my extensive research into the visual abstractions of the human gait, produced by scientists and artists from the nineteenth century to the present day, in which both photography and drawing have played crucial roles. The series is a cumulative piece that honours pivotal artistic and scientific works focused on walking as both a motif and a practice. The more explicit sources of inspiration include Richard Long’s A Line Made by Walking (1967), Kalle Lampela’s Walking Drawings Meditations (2021–23), created with a drawing box hidden in a backpack, the photographic process of Étienne-Jules Marey during the 1880s, and Tim Knowles’ Nightwalks (2008). Of course, there are many more that I cannot expand on here.

Perhaps the most important source of inspiration is a fascinating yet peculiar study by the German physiologist Hermann Vierordt (1853–1943) on the variability in the walking patterns of both healthy individuals and people with disabilities, published in 1881. To record his own gait as well as that of others, Vierordt developed an experimental (now obsolete) Spritzmethode, which involved specially designed, uncomfortable shoes that sprayed streams of paint solution or ink in two colours from vertical brass cylinders attached to key points on the feet (fuchsia for the right foot, aniline blue for the left). The ink fell onto a roll of yellowish straw paper, one metre wide and ten metres long. To capture the elevation and movement of other key body parts, he used horizontal cylinders that sprayed ink on the walls of a long corridor covered in the same paper.

(Left) End of the Line | (Right) Walking-drawing made while carving a line by walking through deep snow for 50 minutes

My piece was created over three sessions in a single day: one for carving the line over 50 minutes while simultaneously making both a walking-drawing and a GPS tracking, as well as some photographs. Seven hours later, I continued documenting the line from different perspectives. Naturally, the evening session was dedicated to light drawings. The resulting line, or walking corridor, averaged 40 cm wide, 25 cm deep, and stretched approximately 10 metres long. The snow was deeper near the steel wall that helps quieten the sound of passing trains.

To my surprise, the line endured much longer than I expected, surviving the transition from winter to spring. Thus, the series evolved into a documentation of its gradual disappearance—a story of the life and death of a line.

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This piece was exhibited at the exhibition 'Walk with Me', curated by Melinda Hunt at DRAW Space, Sydney, Australia, 28 November - 22 December 2024. https://drawspace.org/past-exhibitions-and-events/walk-with-me

Installation at DRAW Space. Photos: © Melinda Hunt

Hear me talking about my research background, walking art practice, and the piece Love Letters to Walking Art & Science at the Australian Walking Artists November chat with special guest artists. 24 November 2024. https://walklistencreate.org/walkingevent/australian-walking-artists-november-chat-with-special-guest-artists/