When Your Workouts Turn Into a Work of Art
The New York Times
Using the maps from his daily runs, Duncan McCabe took the Strava art trend to new heights by creating an animated stickman that has become an online sensation.
Over the summer, when Duncan McCabe would tell his co-workers at his Toronto-area software company that he was heading out for a run, they would ask him whether he was training for a race.
“No,” he would tell them, “I have to go work on my stickman.”
Mr. McCabe, 32, readily acknowledged to his friends and colleagues that his side project was difficult to explain. So he urged them to be patient. He hoped that it would all make sense — eventually.
Sure enough, Mr. McCabe’s vision sprang to life a little over a week ago in the form of a 27-second video on TikTok, where his stickman has been dancing his way to internet celebrity.
Reminiscent of an old-school flipbook, the stickman is an animated compilation of about 120 of Mr. McCabe’s runs from Strava, the exercise-tracking platform. Mr. McCabe, who works for his company’s accounting team, used the app’s map function to record his runs in the form of a hat-wearing, long-legged figure superimposed over Toronto’s city grid.
Gyrating to the funky beat of Sofi Tukker’s “Purple Hat,” the stickman shrugs his shoulders, waves his arms and doffs his cap at about five frames, or five 10-kilometer runs, per second. For Mr. McCabe, it was a 10-month labor of love. By his final run for the project, in October, the all-too-familiar streets of his neighborhood had become a prison of his own creation, the stickman equal parts muse and tyrant.
Bag charms — or key chains by another name — have begun to rival holiday ornaments in their variety and as a form of self-expression.
Batiste’s latest album is a return to his classical music roots — on his terms. Hear him improvise on some of Beethoven’s classics.
Jon Jones punctuated his U.F.C. win with the president-elect’s shimmy, and numerous N.F.L. players followed suit on Sunday.
Now we fret about chatbots. An earlier age worried about automatons, the uncanny humanoid contraptions whose voices could trigger love or mania.
After the U.S. election, auctioneers are looking to woo reluctant bidders back. Watch these 6 bellwether artworks to see how the market performs.
Sarah Sherman plays Matt Gaetz as well as the widow of P’Nut, the conservative darling of the rodent world, while Charli XCX and pals serenade a mom-to-be.
Black artists have long claimed ancient Egypt as their own. Now they’re telling their stories in person on the museum’s floor.
Get ready for the DOGE store.
A shimmering dream on the Nile has inspired creativity from the Harlem Renaissance to Kara Walker to Beyoncé. But how much can you play with the past?
Old photos of the California governor (and navy-suit enthusiast) are being widely shared as bruised Democrats seek a savior.
In the months leading up to the election, Donald J. Trump sat for a slew of casual and unconventional conversations with podcasters and streamers. We watched them all.