Cabspotting was commissioned by The Exploratorium for the Invisible Dynamics project. Cabspotting explores the relationship between taxicabs to the greater bay area. By looking at the aggregate cab data from the city, Cabspotting reveals the bay area’s economic, social, and cultural patterns. Upon first viewing, the work is meant to inspire the viewer with a sense of interconnectedness and awareness of the vast simultaneous activities of their fellow human beings. Like You Are Here (2004), the piece is meant to show the possiblities of benevolent and inspiring uses of surveillance technologies.

The core “engine” of the project consists of an online system to anonymously track and record the movements of Yellow Cab vehicles throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The Cab Tracker builds an alternate "map" of the bay area based solely on cab's movements, and also generates a series of time lapse videos.

Cabspotting is further designed as an open source living framework to use the activity of commercial cabs as a starting point to explore the economic, social, political and cultural issues that are revealed by the cab traces. Where do cabs go the most? Where do they never turn up? Commissioned and volunteer Cab Projects are vehicles for artists, writers, or researchers to explore these issues in the form of a small experiment, investigation or observation. These projects will be included on an ever-growing Cabspotting site to form a continually expanding view of the anthropological record created by this system.

Cabspotting.org