Missed Connections

In an attempt to expand my personal map of Vancouver by using Strava to track 3 of my journeys. I then used the “flyby” feature to find records of people that cross my journey in real time. I picked one person for each journey, marked the place where we had our “missed connection” and then tried to glean what I could about their lives from their internet presence, starting from their Strava profile and then jumping into other forms of social media and other websites.

I wrote each person a missed connection, using popular phrases from Craigslist and dropping creepy hints about their personal lives.

This project is about how even when we are exploring a place in the physical world, like when I am walking my dog, bike commuting or going for a run, a part of us always exists online, whether we are directly sharing our route via Strava or just have an online presence in the background of our minds. It also looks at how we might meet people in person versus how we meet and “know” people online.

︎My 3 routes and the routes of my “missed connections,”  along with Strava’s World Heat Map