(Credit:
Erik Nordenankar )
A Swedish art student who claimed to have created the "biggest drawing in the world" using a GPS device and an international package delivery service has admitted that the drawing is a hoax.
Erik Nordenankar had claimed that he placed a GPS device in a briefcase on March 17 and then sent the case on a 55-day trip around the world with DHL. He originally stated on his Web site that he had given DHL specific travel instructions on the route that the briefcase should take to yield the drawing. After the package allegedly traveled over 6 continents and 62 countries, it was returned to him in Stockholm, Sweden, where he downloaded the GPS coordinates that were recorded by the device to his computer to generate the image.
The technique is described this way: "My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing."
His Web site included two YouTube videos purporting to show the briefcase during its journey and delivery receipts for the package during its circumnavigation of the globe.
However, many visitors to the site pointed out that the route described in the drawing was unlikely to be followed by DHL pilots.
"Were the DHL pilots on acid?" asked one visitor.
Another visitor pointed out technical flaws in the project description.
"A GPS signal cannot penetrate dense materials," wrote a reader using the name Samppa79. "That briefcase looks dense enough to block the signal and the roof of a car or thick walls of an airplane blocks the rest."
Nordenankar has since posted this message to the bottom of the site--presumably because he doesn't want to spoil the surprise--admitting his hoax. "This is fictional work. DHL did not transport the GPS at any time."
A DHL spokesman told the Telegraph that the delivery company had allowed Nordenankar access to a warehouse in Stockholm for a school art project and that it was interested in discussing the hoax with him.
A Swedish art student has posted online what he calls the "biggest drawing in the world," though the picture would seem to be more accurately described as a drawing on a rather modest scale that came into being through a round-the-world technique.
Perhaps that's why a sort of subtitle on Erik Nordenankar's Web site, just above the image, is this: "GPS Generated Self Portrait."
The technique is described this way: "My pen was a briefcase containing the GPS device, being sent around the world. The paths the briefcase took around the globe became the strokes of the drawing."
On the "biggest drawing" Web site, details are sparse, but Nordenankar does also thank package delivery service DHL for helping to make the portrait possible.
He writes that the briefcase began a 55-day circumnavigation on March 17, ending up earlier this month back where it started in Stockholm, Sweden. He then downloaded the GPS information--the trip covered 62 countries on six continents--to his computer and made the self-portrait in a single stroke.
I've sent e-mails to both Nordenankar and DHL for more information and will update this post as I learn more.
While the briefcase's travels may (or may not) have followed the adage that the shortest route between any two points is a straight line, the drawing itself involved more than a few loop-de-loops and curlicues.
You can see Nordenankar's drawing technique in action in the video here, one of two videos on the "biggest drawing" site, along with the full self-portrait.
Is it a hoax? The little bit of evidence I've found so far in poking around the Web suggests that it is not. For instance, there's a similarly hirsute Erik Nordenankar listed as a student at Beckmans College of Design in Stockholm, Sweden--with an exam project described as none other than the "biggest drawing in the world."
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