travel by approximation

"leaving" San Francisco

(Above and below) Selected images from Travel by Approximation: A Virtual Road Trip on Google Maps

[see the book] / [see the video]

Since April of 2009, I have been “traveling” the country via Google Street View, by photoshopping myself into screen shots and writing a travel narrative. In every day that I travel, I must have enough gas, stop for food, have a place to stay, and only drive as far as would be physically possible in a day. The people and stories that I encounter along the way are from online reviews of restaurants that I eat at or hotels that I stay in, though I never look up further information about a place unless I found it (visually) by wandering on Street View. While the travel is virtual, the feelings of discovery, novelty, and shock that I have encountered on my trip have been as real as any I have ever had.

Zion National Park

Colorado City, compound of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints

“leaving” San Francisco

off the Moki Dugway, a notoriously treacherous road

Yuma, AZ: actually the sunniest place on earth

middle of nowhere (Venango, NE)

silos

Texan boot outlet

stopping for gas on the Navajo Trail

Sequoia National Park

my hotel bathroom in Houston

snow!

This project also involved a performance component called The Ministry of Approximate Travel, in which I set up an office for having conversations about places I’d never been– with people who really had been there.