Hundreds of people have died crossing the U.S./Mexico border due to not being able to tell where they are in relation to where they have been and which direction they need to go to reach their destination safely. Initiated by Ricardo Dominguez, co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theatre and a former member of Critical Art Ensemble, Transborder Immigrant Tool is a cellphone-based software application being developed using the Virtual Hiker Algorithm created by artist Brett Stalbaum to guide immigrants across the US/Mexico border as safely as possible.
I recently saw Ricardo speak at the inter(discplinaries) conference, which was rather incredible, and he mentioned this project in some greater detail than what I’d seen online. This project in particular struck my interest a while ago on my Internet travels, and I’ve been meaning to post about it, but was only recently reminded by the post on Networked_Performance.