Walking Lines

Walk and draw

Walking Lines records a route by GPS and turns it into a line. It neither corrects the route on a map nor imitates a drawing made by hand: bends, pauses, detours, and variations in the signal form part of the result.

The project is inspired by Walking Score, a participatory proposal created by the Are.na team in which each route becomes a score.

The notebook

The home page presents the latest walk first and arranges earlier ones as a diary grouped by month. Each entry keeps the drawing, title, place, and date, with quieter details about the type of mark, distance, and duration.

Press a drawing to see it full screen and move to the previous or next one. You can also download a PNG copy. The published version remains fixed: future changes to the visual engine do not reinterpret earlier walks.

How a walk is made

Open the app outdoors and allow access to your location. Title, walker name and place are optional. The place will be public and you choose it: a city, a town, a neighbourhood or a reference that does not reveal an address. Once a route has started, the ⌖ button next to that field fills it in with the name of the locality.
Choose whether to let the route speak as a plain line or intervene in it with Paint. You do not need to turn anything on or use every option.
Press Start and walk. Each new position accepted by the GPS adds a point to the drawing; on screen you see the line, the distance, the time and the number of points.
You can turn on Paint and change its options while walking: changes apply to the following points, so a single route can combine, with restraint, the gestures it needs. The plain line is already a complete drawing; you do not need to pile on every layer. While recording or paused you can also add a Note as a waypoint: you will see it before adding it, can delete the last one, and if the text moves away from the ink a line will preserve its link to the GPS point. If you turn on Soundscape, you will need to allow microphone access when starting.
Press Stop when you finish, or to pause. Then you can Save, Discard, or Continue: recording resumes as a new island and the line does not join the previous one. Walking Lines briefly confirms the new position before fixing it. In normal mode, the real direction orients the white space; during the pause you can enable Random route so the next island lands once anywhere on the page. Whatever you walk during the pause is neither drawn nor counted as distance or time. While the pause is open the GPS stays on and drains battery until you save or discard. Saving sends the route to the notebook and tries to publish it automatically; with no connection it appears as local and you can use Upload later.

White space also draws

When you press Continue, the route resumes as a new island: the walk made during the pause is not drawn, and the line does not join the previous one. In normal mode, the real direction orients the white space; during the pause, Random route can place the next island once anywhere on the page.

Without Paint, the walk already produces a complete drawing: a continuous black line. When enabled, changes affect only subsequent points and can be combined within the same route:

Line lets you vary width, add disorder, roughness, relief, or turn the stroke into dots; width changes blend progressively into one another.
Stain transforms real GPS uncertainty into a band and lets you control its width, hatching, opacity, disorder, and outline.
Soundscape translates ambient sound into forms. The first few seconds calibrate the surroundings.
Write adds words to the last accepted GPS point. The text may move away from the ink, but a fine line preserves its link to the place.

These tools change appearance, not distance or the private route. A brief intervention may be enough: combining does not mean accumulating every layer.

Privacy

Location access is requested when you press Start and stops when you save or discard. During a resumable pause, the GPS remains active, but its readings are neither drawn nor saved. The draft and complete route are stored locally to protect the walk from an interruption.

Coordinates, point-by-point times, GPS accuracy, and sound descriptors remain on the device. Publishing sends only the SVG and its editorial data: title, walker, entered place, date, distance, duration, type of mark, and whether a sound layer exists.