Crafting a running route is a delicate process, especially in a city like San Francisco: you’ve got to find somewhere safe and scenic, avoid the crowds and decide how many hills you want to conquer. One runner in the city, however, is making things even more complicated – with beautiful results.
For the past four years, Lenny Maughan has been turning his routes into art. His paths through the city are carefully chosen so that, viewed on a map, they form illustrations of everything from a simple heart shape to the starship Enterprise. So far he’s made 53 works, including, most recently, an unmistakable image of the artist Frida Kahlo that made a splash on Reddit and in local media.
Maughan didn’t set out to be a running artist, but as route-tracking apps became popular, runners began to notice images in their pathways, “kind of like a Rorschach test,” he said. The immediate impulse among many runners was, inevitably, to draw penises: “That’s where it all began,” he said. “But I wanted to do something different and something original.”
Photo: Lenny Maughan/MapMyRun
照片：藍尼‧莫恩/MapMyRun
His first project was the Vulcan hand gesture from Star Trek, inspired by the 2015 death of Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock. “I just printed out a paper map and sketched a hand shape along Market Street and the other fingers, thumb and wrist came pretty easily,” he said. Then a giant Batman logo, encompassing much of the city: “The larger you go, the more fine-tuned you can make the shape.”
Indeed, creating Frida Kahlo required a 46.5km run. Maughan tracks his paths using the running app Strava, which means you, too, can run in the shape of the celebrated Mexican artist’s face. If you’re as fit as Maughan, it will take you six hours and eight minutes.
The tracking process is high-tech, but the whole thing starts with just a pen and paper. “When I was a kid everyone thought I’d be an artist when I grew up – I was always drawing things,” he said. He was a particular fan of the Etch-a-Sketch, which has something in common with his current work: both require creating images in an unbroken line.
Photo: Lenny Maughan/MapMyRun
照片：藍尼‧莫恩/MapMyRun
His goal is to create images anyone can recognize: “This is just a way to make the streets my own.”
(The Guardian)
慢跑路線的設計需要精心規劃，尤其是在像舊金山這樣的城市──你跑步必須找安全、風景宜人的地方，且要避開人潮，還得決定要爬多少坡。舊金山一位跑者卻讓慢跑路線的規畫變得更加複雜──但成果非常漂亮。
Photo: Lenny Maughan/MapMyRun
照片：藍尼‧莫恩/MapMyRun
藍尼‧莫恩把他的慢跑路線變成藝術，這樣做已經有四年。他在城裡精心選擇路徑，使他的跑步軌跡會在地圖上呈現出各種圖案，從簡單的心形到電影《星際爭霸戰》中的「企業號」星艦都有。目前他已做出五十三件作品──包括最近完成的、明顯是藝術家芙烈達‧卡蘿的肖像，轟動美國社群網站Reddit及當地媒體。
莫恩並非一開始就要做跑步藝術家。但隨著路線追蹤應用程式的普及，跑者開始注意到其跑步路徑所呈現出來的圖像，「這有點像是羅夏墨跡心理學測驗」，莫恩說。許多跑者的直接反應不免是去跑出男性生殖器的圖樣，「事情就是這樣開始的」，他說，「但是我想做一些與眾不同、有原創性的東西」。
他做的第一個圖是電影《星艦迷航記》中瓦肯星人的舉手禮，靈感來自二○一五年李奧納德‧尼莫伊的離世，尼莫伊在《星艦迷航記》中飾演瓦肯人史巴克。「我只是列印出一張地圖，沿著市場街畫了一個手的形狀和其他手指，拇指和手腕都很簡單」。之後他跑出一個巨大的蝙蝠俠標誌，範圍把舊金山的大部份都圈進來──「你跑的範圍越大，就越能夠做出精細的圖案」。
的確，做出卡蘿的肖像需要跑四十六點五公里。莫恩以跑步應用程式Strava來追蹤路徑，這表示你也可以跑出卡蘿這位著名墨西哥藝術家的肖像。這將費時六小時八分鐘──如果你跟莫恩一樣強健的話。
路線追蹤的過程是運用高科技，但這一切的開端只是一支筆和一張紙。「我小時候，大家都以為我長大以後會成為藝術家，因為我總是畫個不停」，莫恩說。他小時候超愛「神奇畫板」（Etch-a-Sketch），這繪圖玩具跟他現在的作品有個共同點：都必須用不間斷的線條來畫出圖像。
他的目標是創造出大家都能認得出來的圖像：「這只是我去擁有這些街道的方式」。
（台北時報林俐凱編譯）
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