Over time, the flight paths of nearly 20,000 planes filled in the shape of the country without directly depicting any of its geographic features.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, artist Aaron Koblin processed U.S. Federal Aviation Administration data to create a portrait of America using brushstrokes of light 1,000 miles across.

Over time, the flight paths of nearly 20,000 planes filled in the shape of the country without directly depicting any of its geographic features. The emergence of artistic forms from scientific and technical data is a central artistic trope in much of Koblin’s work.

A revealing animation made using similar flight data can be viewed on Koblin’s website.

Credit: Aaron Koblin, UCLA