John Maeda & the "One Line Project"

The One Line Project was created by John Maeda, an MIT trained software programmer, who is also a pioneer in the development of digital art and design since the 1980's. One Line is one of his many artistic projects that explore the inherent creative possibilities of computer software technology, and the web as a medium that allows for the expression of these possibilities.

For this project, Maeda was inspired by the "Hands Across America" campaign, a fundraising event held on Sunday May 25th 1986, which saw 7 million people hold hands in a human chain for 15 minutes along a path across the United States, from New York to California, L.A. Each participant paid $10 and the proceeds were donated to local charities.

On contemplating the achievement of Hands Across America, Maeda started to wonder about whether or not it would be possible to effectuate a line 'that was longer than the perimeter of the earth.' To achieve this Maeda wrote a basic system with 'a funky JAVA-based client that collected lines from people all over the world.' People were invited to draw part of the line and upload it to a server, and in 1999 the contents of what Maeda terms the 'line database' organised into an exhibition called "oneline.com", which was also the name of the server. In the two years, from the announcement of the idea to the actualisation of the project, around 4 kilometres of 'line data' was collected. Maeda's rather large and seemingly impossible goal was 40,000 kilometres! Imagine downloading that to view - it would take an eternity!

Maeda wrote software to allow him to join each of the individual lines from endpoint to start point. This allowed him to manipulate the lines to get them to fit on a single canvas. Maeda has made the softcopy version available for you to access from his website 'Maeda Studio'. You can choose to view a selection of the line samples before they were assembled and a section of the final tapestry in different resolutions, depending on your computer's browser capabilities. Maeda has also uploaded the entire tapestry if you should feel brave enough to load it.

Initially the line was printed out using the ratio of 72 pixels for every one inch, and was displayed as a tapestry at the Ginza Graphic Gallery, in Tokyo in 1999, run by the Dai Nippon Printing Co. Ltd. Within the gallery there were also computers running the software programme Maeda created from the line database. Over 4,000 people participated, which is a fair few less than the 7 million for Hands Across America, but One Line is still probably one of the largest collaborative artworks ever created! Without the Internet as a medium to receive and arrange the works, it would have been a very difficult undertaking to realise such an enormous project. Can you imagine fitting together 4000 kilometres of lines on paper? What a task. Imagine what would have happened if Christo and Maeda had collaborated on this project - my guess is that the outcome may have been more like Hands Across America - maybe with 7 million people holding a portion of the 40,000km printed line from the east to west coast of America, whilst holding hands maybe? Something to think about.