Biggest Drawing in the World has been making its rounds about the internet lately. The concept is a GPS in a briefcase shipped around the world to specific locations in order to create a line drawing. What’s interesting is how quickly “fake” has been called about the project on various sites posting the story (see Meta Filter, Hack-a-Day and MAKE). Yes, it’s the internet, and that usually means someone is going to call just about anything fake, but for the most part the calls of fakery are well founded. From simple questions of how one would get a decent signal inside a giant cargo plane to my favorite of how one convinces DHL to fly in circles for your art project. I’m inclined to believe that this is fake as well or at least highly embellished.
Erik Nordenankar, the artist behind the project, does in fact appear to be a real artist with other works posted online. So the question then, for me, becomes did DHL contact him with the idea for a viral marketing piece or was the idea his own?
Update: Looks like someone has already done their research and found out that this was in fact designed from the start as a viral marketing piece. It was Nordenankar’s project at Beckmans College of Design and, in fact, on his profile page he states as much:
The best advertising is developed with society. using a GPs [sic] and the express shipping company DhL [sic], i drew a self-portrait on our planet. i used the technological aids of our time to make the world’s biggest drawing, along with advertising adapted to the contemporary era. a campaign the recipient wants to see and which is interesting enough for people to want to share it with their friends.