No Place Like Home GPS shoes

Commissioned by Global Footprint, a Northamptonshire-based visual arts and living heritage programme designer Dominic Wilcox has created a fully functional prototype pair of shoes that will guide you home no matter where you are in the world.



Wilcox: “I was commissioned by the Global Footprint project in Northamptonshire, a place famous for shoe making, to create some shoes. I decided to make a pair of shoes that can navigate you to anywhere you wish to travel to. I thought about the Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy could click her shoes together to go home. After uploading your required destination to the shoes via a piece of custom made mapping software and a USB cable, the GPS, which is embedded in the heel, is activated by a heel click. It then communicates to the wearer via a ring of LED lights to point in the required direction. The shoe with the GPS wirelessly communicates with the right shoe that has a progress bar of lights to show how close you are to the destination.”
Dominic Wilcox

In order to create the fully functioning prototype shoes Wilcox worked with interactive arts and technology expert Becky Stewart and local Northampton shoe maker Stamp Shoes to create the bespoke leather shoes.

More Dominic Wilcox shoes in the Virtual Shoe Museum.

If you what to read more about his work Variations on normal book
A book of over one hundred odd yet strangely logical inventions from the mind of Dominic Wilcox. Ideas include slides for falling leaves, frizbee transport and many other useful inventions.
102 pages, 100% recycled paper, 125 mm x 125 mm. Signed by the artist.