bad news

So ... I found out tonight that Alfred State College is not going to allow the Life Lines (spray chalk) project to happen on their campus. They are afraid that students will see the chalk lines, think that it's actual spray paint/graffiti, and think that it is ok for them to graffiti the campus as well. Absurd. 

But, I think this means that I am just going to go ahead and do the project myself (in town and on Alfred University's campus). I will have to get approval from the town to make this change, but I don't think they'll have a problem with it. I will just figure out a way to make the project an interesting self-portrait (which won't be as interesting as a portrait of the community, but hopefully the documentation and successful drawing my own life can be used to convince other towns/cities to let me do the project elsewhere in the future.

The "map"  and legend will have to be interesting in other ways and for other reasons. I am thinking about using the three colors of chalk (red/blue/yellow, and there's also white) to represent different things. For instance, a red dotted line could represent my daily routine, the blue chalk could be used for symbols (to represent points of interest - something that caught my attention - or where I stopped to chat with someone, etc.) and the yellow chalk could be used for times that I go on "aimless walks" (inspired by the Situationist theory of de'rive, or "drifting"). Perhaps I could try to go on one "aimless walk" per day. 

This is really going to throw everything back up in the air, and I have to figure it out fast, before it starts to snow. I'm gonna go work on ideas and I'll post an update soon...

More on drifting here and here (funnily enough, this second link is to a similar project that was done in Portland, OR, except what I've noticed about most other projects like this is that most of them are done using GPS).