Artist Esther Polak founded Stichting Beelddiktee (Foundation Image Dictation) in 2004. She noticed that her focus of interest in her projects mostly revolved around a certain kind of research: research of the technically, socially or culturally mediated observation.
This mediation forms selective spectacles, or rather a sieve, between us and reality.
Esther Polak often works with visualization of GPS tracks. She investigates the GPS track as an independent medium. For example, in the ‘Nomadic Milk’ project she had a robot developed that can spread GPS tracks by means of an inverted bottle filled with sand that had a hole in the cap. She gave GPS loggers to nomads in Nigeria to discuss the routes followed on the basis of the track followed by the robot. High-tech in unfavorable places.
Floris Maathuis developed a software package for Esther Polak in which she can edit GPS tracks and convert them to print commands for the robot.