Title:
Trolley
Spotting
Location: Web-based commission for this website
Launch
Project >
Adele’s project uses an interactive map to display her findings from recent
‘trolley spotting’ trips. On 14 May 2005 Adele visited Nottingham,
carrying out an extensive survey of trolley activity in the local area. She
photographed and logged every single trolley she discovered. Jam-packed with
trolley data, the website allows you an incite into the private lives of shopping
trolleys which have escaped the local supermarkets. Adele is making three versions
of the Trolley Spotting map, each localised around the different venues
on the exhibition tour. In Nottingham, she is working with Marks & Spencer
and special turquoise Trolley Spotting tags will be attached to their
entire fleet of trolleys for the duration of the exhibition.
tracking trolleys with a Global Positioning System
For
Day-to-Day Data, I am documenting shopping trolleys that have been
abandoned (or ‘liberated’) from supermarkets local to each of the
three gallery venues. I am fascinated by the fact that these trolleys manage
to travel quite some distance from their ‘home’ supermarket, and
often start to acquire items as they go. The trolleys look quite dejected as
they sit at the side of the road, or peep out from behind a tree and I am interested
in capturing the different methods of disposal, ranging from careless dumping
to considered parking. I would like to determine if trolley dispersal differs
in different areas of the country and in different parts of a city. It is something
I became aware of whilst living in Islington, where most visitors to the local
supermarket walk home with their shopping instead of using a car, so therefore
feel the need to adopt a trolley when they exceed a manageable number of bags.
As part of my research process, I am spending time in
each of the three cities the exhibition visits, documenting trolleys in the
local area. Using a Global Positioning System, I track my journey and the co-ordinates
of each of the trolleys I find. For each trolley, I take a photograph, document
the model and make of the trolley, the date, time, location and distance from
the supermarket. This information is then transferred to an interactive map
online, where visitors can go on a virtual trolley spotting walk and play a
shopping cart game. Visitors to the galleries can pick up a map that will take
them on a shopping trolley tour of their city, taking in trolley hot spots and
allowing them to add their own trolleys along the way. Alongside the creation
of maps, I am working closely with local supermarkets, tagging their trolleys
so that they can be easily identified and to alert people to the fact that they
are being monitored.
Adele Prince
April 2005
www.adeleprince.com
