GMU:Patterns/Özge Börekci

The Line Takes Time

Overview

The Line Takes Time investigates Weimar through walking, duration, and line. It explores how a line is produced not only by movement through space, but also by the time spent in certain places.

In this project, the line is both something measurable and something relational. It is generated through speed, rhythm, pauses, and dwell time, yet it also points to the idea that forming a relation with a place takes time. The line does not simply pass through the city; it gains weight where time, attention, and attachment begin to gather.

The project begins with the question: How does a walking body produce different lines of duration across different spatial conditions? In a small and accessible city like Weimar, time is not only about travel distance, but also about where one chooses to stay, slow down, or pass through.

Background: From Malleable Boundaries to The Line Takes Time

This project builds on the idea of social bubbles that I explored in my previous group project Malleable Boundaries. Malleable Boundaries_Submission .While that work dealt with invisible social boundaries through proximity, distance and separation, The Line Takes Time shifts the question to the scale of Weimar: do the campus and the rest of the city produce different bubbles? In this project, bubble conditions are investigated through walking, thresholds and dwell time, and translated into a line-based notation.

Method

The project uses walking as a method of artistic research. Walks across different areas, passages, and thresholds in Weimar are recorded through GPS. The collected data includes position, speed, rhythm, and time spent.

Line Notation

The GPS trace is not used as a conventional map. Instead, it is translated into a line-based notation:

• passing through becomes a thin line
• slowing down becomes a heavier line
• staying becomes density
• repeated presence becomes accumulation
• thresholds create changes in the behavior of the line

[Possible] Installation

The project may result in a series of walking plots, drawings, video plots, or a line-based installation. These outputs translate walking data into visual patterns of movement, duration, staying, and spatial relation.

References

1. Kandinsky
2. Sol LeWitt
3. Manfred Mohr
4. Richard Long
5. George K. Francis - A Topological Picturebook, 1987
6. Numberphile - An Unexpected Twist on Möbius Strips [1]
7. Dan Graham - Classic and Recent Installations/Pavilions 1974-2008 [2]
8. Branko Grunbaum - Tilings and Patterns: Second Edition