Case study · 1000·C002 · Case evac · Winter 2024
Distance Travelled
One vehicle, five days, one line across a continent.
THE PROJECT
тисяча
One vehicle, five days, one line across a continent. A Nissan Pathfinder was driven from Bristol to Kyiv to become a frontline ambulance. It was photographed from the moving seat the whole way, through the week Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached its thousandth day.
DAYS 999–1001 · T01 → T14 · 1 792 KM
Thin air
The first three days are light. There is the Channel, then open Schengen motorway: gantries, noise walls, the van in the next lane, wing mirrors full of rain and passing lorries. Day 1001 runs 827 km from Hanover to Kraków, the longest stretch on the clock.
The pictures are mostly speed and weather. Nothing stops you.
DAYS 1002–1003 · T14 → T19 · 800 KM
The heavy
After Kraków the frames slow down and fill up. Red-and-white concrete blocks line the verge. A billboard outside Lviv has been stripped to grey panels. There are houses behind fences and a hand-painted ПРОДУКТИ sign. Day 1003 is 507 km of Ukraine at dusk, ending in tail lights and rain at 2 592 km.
In Kyiv the camera goes underground into the metro, the city's fragile shelter. It comes back up to the Wall of Remembrance and the flags on Maidan.
The project doesn't explain the change. It holds the two halves side by side and leaves the distance to make the point.
M1–M5 · MARKED ][
Boundaries become borders
There are five crossings on the line. Three are lines on a map you'd only notice because the satnav tells you. The fifth is the hinge of the whole piece.
M1
280–323 km
Dover → Calais. A ferry, drawn dashed. The only early crossing you can feel.
M2
442 km
France → Belgium · a boundary
M3
628 km
Belgium → Germany · a boundary
M4
1 557 km
Germany → Poland · a boundary
M5
1 973 km
Poland → Ukraine · кордон. A real border, with a queue, papers and a barrier.
THREE WAYS OF MOVING
Roads, routes and rail
OUT · 5 DAYS
Road
The outbound journey, shot from inside the vehicle through the windscreen, the mirror and the passenger window.
RECORDED · 4 LEGS
Route
The journey as data: a hand-drawn sheet of four legs, with bearings as written (120°, 70°, 110°, 65°), towns on dashed leaders and km from Bristol down the side.
BACK · AND BELOW
Rail
The way home and the way down: the sleeper corridor, coffee from the onboard kettle, snow through the glass, then a taxi to the Polish border. The Kyiv metro is shelter as well as transport.
You drive in, but you can't drive out. The vehicle stays, and the trip home runs to someone else's timetable.
FROM THE HAND SHEET TO THE LOOP
The technological journey
The photographs came first. Everything after was built to carry them without getting in their way. Each stage below takes the previous one's numbers and doesn't recompute them, so every frame keeps an address on the line.
01 · paper
Hand sheet
The route drawn by hand: legs, headings, crossings and distances. Everything downstream reads from it.
02 · html + svg
Anatomy, sheets 1–2
The journey as one line, at 1 px ≈ 0,9 км. It's cut into strata for route, bearing, segment length, latitude, frames and dispatches, with a key sheet of registers.
03 · system
A coding system
Waypoints T01–T19, legs E1–E4, crossings M1–M5 and frames Φ, for example 1000·E4·T19·Φ001. It's bilingual by design.
04 · three.js
Anatomy in motion
An orthographic camera, unlit line work and type drawn in CSS3D. Views move from the flat sheet to oblique to isometric, with a 4:5 exporter for stills and clips.
05 · loops
Time as shape
8 s loops at 4:5 that fold road, barrier and sky into an isometric corner as the road passes. Versions include the metro, a yellow house and an unfinished bridge.
06 · print
The scrapbook
24 spreads in two parts. Distance appears as five rings, one per day, where area keeps the count. Each day's news sits beside that day's stretch of road.
07 · social + site
Photo and data plate
A square frame over a black instrument panel with a progress rule, a true map and the km count. There are 16 s muted Instagram loops and an Info page that holds the set.
08 · next
The vehicle
A Blender model of the Pathfinder in black and in camo, with its plate and spot lamps.
08 · NEXT
The vehicle
The Pathfinder model on one frame: the black build as a wireframe on the HUX grid, and the camo build. Drag the divider, or switch between them.
WHAT IT ADDS UP TO
Adventure travel usually sells the distance, and this project turns that round. The kilometres are exact, the bearings are recorded and the maps are drawn to scale. Even so, the distance that matters isn't on any axis. In the project's own words, it is not geographic but perceptual. Europe feels thin and fast until the border, and after it every frame has weight.