Jen Hamilton, Jen Southern and Chris St Amand are artists based in Canada and the UK who use satellite navigation devices to trace the routes people take through local environments and to make collaborative maps.

The purpose of the bureau is to involve local people in making maps of an area, and to find new ways of representing the data gathered. Participants are invited to take a walk or a journey determined by themselves, whether it was the route to work, to an historic building, a walk for exercise or a meander based on more personal thoughts about location. The journeys are mapped with a gps (global positioning system) device. In these collaborative maps there is a powerful sense of people collaborating on a map of a place dependant on personal experience, rather than the measured assessment of a formal map. Our interest is in how walking with a GPS device that is transmitting live data gives walkers a new perspective on a journey, and how a sense of place is performed.