On the 17th of March, 2008, Swedish artist Erik Nordenankar sent off a briefcase containing a GPS unit with the express transportation company DHL. 55 days later, the package returned to Stockholm with its journey around the world recorded on the GPS. What the data translated to was a giant self-portrait of the artist, which had traveled through 6 continents and 62 countries and comprised of one 110,664 km long stroke.

On his site, you can find his travel instructions given to DHL (which is extensive, and also available as a poster-size PDF), a video of the briefcase’s journey (and at times even Nardenankar himself accompanies the case wearing a ‘VISITOR’ DHL vest and pushing giant pallets of cargo around in their warehouses and planes), and of course the drawing itself. Below is a video showing highlights of the trip:

Truly a remarkable piece of work, and sort of reminds me of Chairface Chippendale’s failed attempt to carve his face in the moon, though obviously more successful.

UPDATE:

Thought a pretty neat idea, this project has been (to my understanding) logically debunked over on MetaFilter.

Beagle notes:

If you blow up the map by clicking on it, the scrolling line of the drawing becomes a series of straight line segments. The end points of those segments match the coordinates in the “instructions to DHL” chart/poster, which can be blown up as a PDF via the link below it. So, if this is to be believed, DHL followed instructions to make a long series of pointless flights (refuelling in mid-air?) all over the world. Not to be believed, clearly.

By the way, DHL, FedEx and the rest don’t ship stuff point to point like this. It all goes through hubs. I don’t know where DHL’s hubs are, but anything you ship by FedEx in the US flies to Memphis overnight, gets sorted, and flies out to the destination airport. So a series of multiple shipments would result in a starburst-shaped drawing, not a portrait.

Dave Faris comments on the unbelievably short amount of time it supposedly took to complete the project, given Beagle’s observation above:

Not to mention time. If this is some dude’s senior project, he had to have conceived it in, oh, 1969.