PUBLIC MARKS with search travel

Tony White is the author of novels including Foxy-T (Faber and Faber) and the non-fiction work Another Fool in the Balkans. Tony also co-edited the fiction anthology Croatian Nights (Serpent’s Tail/VBZ). Balkanising Bloomsbury is a fiction project by White which reworks the archive of existing texts about the Balkans, from travel writing, Hague tribunal transcripts and mass media texts, using experimental literary techniques to create completely new works of fiction which explore ideas of European identity.

Unlike the traditional ways to capture travel information, our approach relies on the mobile phone to generate “automatic passive” GSM fingerprints and trigger an in-situ questionnaire. It is an hybrid solution of implicit motion detection with the air traveller’s consent and explicit disclosure of the travel experience.

But one thing I've learned through my years of dating is that just because I'll want to erase you from my memory, I don't have to erase all these great travel experiences. Will I want to forget hiking up that volcano the other day? Of course not. I'll just want to forget that you were hiking with me − and thanks to the magic of Photoshop, I can.

November 9th 2007 - November 13th 2008

one year on foot - 4646km through China

unlimited beard & hair growth

thelongestway.com

musical score by the kingpins ( myspace.com/theoneandonlykingpins ) and zhu fengbo

Additional info:

- I never finished my original goal of walking to Germany. Instead, I walked for a year and roughly 4500km, passed the desert of Gobi, and then decided to stop walking for now.

- All of the distance from Beijing to Ürümqi has been completed solely on foot, straight good old walking. There are instances where you can see me in the video sitting on a plane or riding a boat, but those are during breaks I had to take from walking, either to sort out bureaucracy issues or to take care of some personal things.

- I had been planning this trip for over a year before I even started, and getting as far as I got was an experience for which I am very grateful.

- Obtaining the necessary visa for a trip like this was not very easy, hence I had to go back to Beijing a few times to resolve some issues.

- The songs I used in the video are 1) Zhu Fengbo - "Olive Tree" and 2) The Kingpins - "L'aventurier" - visit the Kingpins website if you want to know more, they are very cool I think.

- This is not a strict "1 pic a day" video, because I wanted to make it a bit more alive by adding some additional movement. Sometimes during the film you would follow me turn around, or something would happen in the background. I tried to capture these moments to make the video more interesting.

- The core of this project is in fact my website "www.thelongestway.com" where I have posted my extensive travel diary, starting from day 1 (Nov 9th 2007) and describing every single day until the end one year later.

The word reblog probably scares a lot in the traditional media mindset. Their first reaction is that someone’s stealing my content. Maybe, but the reblog is also pushing ideas to a larger audience that would not otherwise see/read an idea. It’s also a vote that the writer has something of value. Stuff that isn’t interesting doesn’t travel on the interwebs.