2014-2015
Remote controlled light-writing device on train tracks.
Series of 15 photographs and 2 videos – 9min. and 4min.
France / Mexico

Abstract
The Rielógrafo is a remote controlled rail movable device that is able to write with light large format text over the railroad landscape. It’s a railway 2D typewriter whose sentences are readable only by means of a long exposure photograph or manipulated video.

The Rielógrafo consist of a suitcase with nylon wheels that allows it to slide on the rails. In the center of the dolly, there is one vertical pole with 288 ultra bright RGB LEDs, each one corresponds to a pixel in the vertical plane. While moving, the LEDs are controlled by an Arduino micro controller that turns them on and off depending on programmed text. When the dolly moves over the tracks, the horizontal plane is created by persistence of vision. To the naked eye, the text will be invisible, but for the camera the light persistence will create blurred trails of light in the form of readable text.

To use the railway as a writing line, works as a metaphor for how trains revolutionized communications. This piece talks about the possibility of writing content in a perception scale beyond our physical capacities. It talks about how to read the significance of human impact over the land throughout our historic times.