Generative Psychogeography / .Walk / Brainfuck

- Posted: 18.Jul.2010.

Generative psychogeography algorithm example:

3rd Left
1st Right
2nd Right
Repeat

Same algorithm in classic .walk:

Repeat
{
3rd street left
1st street right
2nd street right
}

Same algorithm in brainfuck:

[
+++>
+<
++<
]

Same algorithm in Befunge:

v   >     v 
    +
    +
    ^+<
      +
      +
      +
>     ^   <

Like before but shorter and with a random intial direction but the direction-arrows must be executed as well so this is actually a right-moving algorithm:

v         >++V
          + 
> ?   +++ ^  <

.WALK: Stranger than any Pynchon Conspiracy [Aaahhh

- Posted: 21.Dec.2005.

[Aaahhh] I thought. Oh no! I thought also, it's another one of those zany generative psychogeography experiments which seem to be going on everywhere at the moment. I mean, you can go to any random blog & within 3 double clicks you find yet another report of a psychogeographic walk talking about 'aimlessly wandering in memory of the flaneur' & 'the sublime spell of the algorithm' always supplemented by shady pictures of even shadier back-alleys or modernist high-rises towering into the sky. Well you know, it was fun in the beginning but now it's just everywhere, psychogeography has become as fashionable as Prada. What do I say, it's even worse: psychogeography has turned into the Dolce & Gabana of the pedestrian underground.

Socialfiction LINK

swarmbrain.walk

- Posted: 09.Jan.2006.

Explaining this experiment meant facing a panic struck crowd of art-lovers who had anticipated a nice Sunday afternoon stroll, but suddenly saw themselves diminished to the role of a hard drive mounted on the back of an ant: .walking chunks of peripatetic-computer code. Another example of (.walk) codephobia. Like always this fear was really not necessary.

Socialfiction LINK

.walk London report by Magda

- Posted: 24.Jan.2006.




Urban Visions in C-Lite (2003 somewhere?)

Wilfried Hou Bek of Socialfiction.org handed London psychogeographers a scrap of paper on a chill November afternoon in Soho Square. The paper was neatly typed with C-Lite. English instructions rehashed as code, to be retranslated back into English. As any Babelfish user will know, the applying of several translation filters can lead to one hell of an unholy mess. Good luck to us all!

The psychogeographic aim for this experiment was to view the city as a database, or switchboard. The city as computer. Pedestrians, previously tourists, hep cats, under-citizens and Sloanes, would perhaps be exposed as not only people, but also pawn-like carriers of information on an urban energy grid. Moving with minimal awareness of their environment, following predestined instructions. Exchanging money as information.

As psychogeographers, we would demote ourselves willingly to the role of pawn, to see what we could see. To know the score. We would thrust ourselves into the hands of the city by following predesignated routes on our little C-Lite scraps of paper. Wilfried was playing as a pawn also, so I guess it was no longer his game, but the city's. Skipping back. We were told to meet in the square, and to dress like psychogeographers. Saj and I approached to see what appeared to be a small, closely-knotted segment of the underbelly of London, lurking in black around a bicycle and Shabnam's hat. Back to the scraps of paper. Each contained instructions to, take, say, the 1st street on the right, then the 3rd on the left. The third instruction was dependent on which group the walker was in. Some had 1st street right, some had x street left - this was to guarantee a variation of route.

We began walking in a ragged band, and swiftly veered off into different set courses. Psychogeographers? It's like herding cats. Mind you, we were just doing what we were told. Of course, we weren't really pawns. We weren't electrical charges on a switchboard. Each person took pleasure in retranslating the C-Lite to suit their current disposition. What, when it comes down to it, is a street? Does it have to have a name? A sidewalk? A kerb, or cobblestones? Does the definition conveniently encompass the interior of a pub? After all, it's the rocky road to ruin, and roads are streets, innit. Many of us crept into openings and interjections we never knew existed, using the rigidity of the instructions as an excuse. It's a bit like a street, guv, and I don't know what's down it. And I fancied putting myself about a bit.

We could have argued that an unthinking piece of software would have done the same. But it was human curiosity that led us down routes filled with graffiti and security guards, community housing and vans full of packing crates, no-go areas many of them, I'm sure. Saj and I found ourselves following a pattern which initially roughly traced the right-angles of a swastika but developed into crescent moons slotted into one another - make a rainbow to the right, then a larger rainbow to the left - with Soho Square always featuring, our fulcrum, seen from many angles. The shape we walked was basically like half of that made by iron filings when manipulated by a bar magnet. I wonder what shapes the other groups made? I wonder how it would look, laid out on a map? After an hour, the motley crew reconvened at the square to exchange information. Only Wilfried and Shabnam had, I think, crossed paths during the exercise. All had rewritten the code to say what they wanted it to say. Several noted the predominance of cc:tv marking their steps. Once you get off the info-express of Oxford Street, it seems, the cameras are easier to spot. I guess we couldn't have veered off the instructions too much, curious security guards nonwithstanding, or the city switchboard would have passed on an error message on a monitor somewhere.

Saj and I noticed that we were becoming a tourist-magnet - where we walked, into the shadowiest and oddest of corners, a random tourist or two would hesitate, then follow, drawn inexorably by our winter-warmth outfits and map-perusing. They probably wondered why we looked so pleased when we came to a dead end. So, the psychogeographers took on the hue of tourists. Conversely, all tourists in Soho Square looked like psychogeographers - walking with purpose, drinks in their hands, bulky artfolders under their arms. And, of course, maps.

Magda Knight

.walkion

- Posted: 24.Jan.2006.


(Click for full size)

// quaternion.walk or .pacpong in automode.walk // coding by socialfiction.org // // code for .pactim(this) // // W=.walkion ; W=[X, Y, V]; W=[0][0][(-,+)] -> W[3,1]=(-) walk { Pos=[5,5]; random int x = new random(1-3); random int y = new random(1-3); random bool xd=new random(+,-); random bool yd=new random(+,-); W=[x][y][xd, yd]; // W= [ ] [ ] [ , ] for (;;) { if (Pos[1]+(w[3,1]+W[1]))>10 || Pos[1]+(w[3,1]+W[1]))>0) { if (w[3,1]=(-)) {w[3,1]=(+);} else {w[3,1]=(-);} } do.pactim(this).Pos[1]+=(W[3,1]+W[1]); if ((Pos[2]+(W[3,2]+W[2]))>10 || Pos[2]+(W[3,2]+W[2])<0) { if (w[3,2]=(-)) {w[3,2]=(+);} else {w[3,2]=(-);} } do.pactim(this).Pos[2]+=(W[3,2]+W[2]); if (Pos(pactim(this))==Pos(.walk-cannibal)) { .walk.system.out("GAME OVER") } }}

To us the greatest miracle about Pacman has always been the transportation portals on the left & right side of the maze. Pacman goes in at one end & comes back out on the other side of the screen. Where is Pacman in between?

While trying to device ways to honour the peripatetical invention of quaternions, the harbinger of 4D mathematics, by using them in a .walk application, the answer to this fundamental problem in Pac-Phenomenology came to us during a walk. In one of those Eureka moments that define art & science, it suddenly all made sense: Pacmans maze only seems 2-dimensional. In reality the 2 vertical edges are bend towards each other in such a way that the 2 ends meet, making the pacverse looking somewhat similar to a tube from a 3d-perspective. Pacman & the pac-cannibals can't see this, as it's outside their range of perception. This traversing of dimensions is like what travelling through a black hole would be to us. Pacman scientists probably will think that these gateways enable pacmannians to travel through time as well as through space.

Like Pacman, algorithmic walks are executed on a 2 dimensional flatland. Wouldn't it be great to entertain the Transmediale 04 massive by .walking a game of Pacman with them? In order to this we created our own quaternion-like algorithm. We call it a .walkion.

It looks like this:

W=[2][1][(+,-)]

As you can see the .walkion is a 3 term array to be applied on a whole-number grid. The first variable tells the psychogeographer how many steps to move along the X-axis, the second variable applies to the Y-axis & the third variable contains for both movements the direction. It's pure geometripatetic funk.

If you want to simulate a gateway like Pacman, you'd only have to add an instruction like this to your .walk code:

if (W[1]>10) W[1]=0;

Once your position on the X-axis becomes bigger then 10 it becomes 0 again, meaning that you suddenly have moved backwards while going forward! Eski!
Too bad it doesn't work like that in the real world. Unless you would use an extra dimension, like tunnels.

To find a resolution that would work in the physical world, we found we had to turn Pacman somewhat into Pong! A PingPacPong.walkion.

10 by 10 grid, Pacman ("^") starts at middle (5,5) & moves W=[2][1][(+,+)] see what happens:

* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * ^ * * *
* * * * ^ * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *

und so weiter...

* * * * ^ * * * * *
* * ^ * * * * * * *
^ * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * ^ *
* * * * * * ^ * * *
* * * * ^ * * * * *
* * ^ * * * * * * *
^ * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * ^ *
* * * * * * ^ * * *

The system is now in loop while Pacman follows it's vector as determined by the third term in the .walkion. In stead of (the impossible) horse-leaps across the field we could temporarily change the vector to get us at a course that intersects the horse-leap algorithm. It's not perfect (but what is[aaahhh]?) but at least it get's you at the same place the hyper~jump would have. It will be fun! (and it was [aaahhh]!!!)

* * * * ^ * * * * *
* * ^ * * * ^ * * *
^ * * * * * * * ^ *
* * ^ * * * * * ^ *
* * * * ^ * ^ * * *
* * * * ^ * ^ * * *
* * ^ * * * * * ^ *
^ * * * * * * * ^ *
* * ^ * * * ^ * * *
* * * * ^ * * * * *

.walkion trace made by trolley

quaternion.walk

- Posted: 24.Jan.2006.




The invention of the quaternion is a curious episode in the history of pedestrian culture. On 16 October 1843 mathematician William Rowan Hamilton made a Sunday afternoon stroll through Dublin with his wife, when all of sudden: " An electric circuit seemed to close; and a spark flashed forth". This spark was a revolutionary formula that moved mathematics into four dimension & that became known as the quaternion: 'a new System of Imaginaries'. Hamilton in utter joy could not resist the temptation to scratch the formula into the limestone of the Brougham bridge which for these reason became a place for nerd-pilgrimage.

To a psychogeographer the particularities of the birth of the quaternion is not a freak incident, it only proves the fundamental concept that walking is a necessity for creativity. That this peripatetic brain-chemistry applies even more so for understanding non-Euclidian geometry is a fact that should appeal to everybody doing work in the mathematics of urban space & place, a field that still has to make some major breakthroughs.

A dimension is a geometric way of referring to a quantity that can change (a variable). The number of dimensions of an object is the number of directions it points in. From Hamilton's own words we laymen can deduce a little of what is means for an object to point in multiple dimensions. A quaternion contains a 'real' part which is the set of three variables that contain the position of an object in the dimensions we take for granted; usually expressed as: x, y, z. The 4th dimension is the 'imaginary' part, which is more understandable when you call it a vector. Hamilton described this dimension as 'forward' & 'backwards'. Imagine in your minds eye a cube placed in the abstraction of a desolate 3D mathematical space. Suppose you want to transport this cube in it's entirely +5 in every dimension. In 3D you can do this by adding the required amount for every dimension in turn, an operation that can easily result in what game-developers call Gimbals-lock, an error in matrix computation. By using quaternions it becomes possible to move the cube along the fourth dimensional axis: this causes its movement in one part through the first three dimensions. Remember that just like a square is waferthin in our third dimension so is our cube in the fourth dimension. Once you get the idea you actually haven't gained one new dimension, but an infinite amount of them: all possible directions the cube can move in. The novelty of the quaternion was that it enabled mathematicians for the first time to calculate this dimension from within the system itself. You could perhaps also say that the fourth dimension contains metadata about the dimensions 'below' it. That psychogeographers are interested in dimensions that can only been understand as movement is no small wonder.

Generative psychogeography understood within it's own system is a two dimensional system. Rules like "second left, first right, third right, repeat" when executed on a mathematical grid always loop themselves invariable. But when applied in a city this hardly ever happens, so seen form inside the algorithm something goes wrong outside of it because the system itself is flawlessly executing it's rules. This dimension that distorts the loop is the city. In it's original function as tool for urban explorations, this was precisely the point of using these algorithms, but to a .walk application that doesn't use swarm tactics (random encounters between a large amount of participants) this randomness in the urban system is seriously threatening .walk functionality because it needs interaction at predictable intervals. This urban interference in a straight forward .walk application might at best result in a severe decrease in processing speed, but it might also yield to situations in which 2+2 does not always equals 4. To prevent the trajectories of the .walk participants to become unpredictable we propose to employ quaternion-tactics to guide psychogeographers through the randomness of the city grid & bring them back to where they began. The space (the number of turns) between the actual position & the position where the walk started could be deployed as buffer-space for pending operations, thus killing 2 birds with one stone.

The generative quaternion .walk executed during Transmediale 04 will try to come to grasp with these fundamental technical problems in the .walk project that as yet prevent .walk to be a truly functional computer that relies on hardwired interaction predictability. By providing the city shape as meta-information within the system in order to guide the algorithm to where it started the processing speed will make a steep curve upwards .

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,55918,00.html

Programming .walk for Dummies

- Posted: 24.Jan.2006.

THE TECHNOLOGY WILL FIND USES FOR THE STREET ON IT'S OWN

programming .walk for dummies

Example 1

// Classic.walk Repeat { 1 st street left 2 nd street right 2 nd street left }

This .walk example shows the classic generative psychogeographical algorithm, that urban exploration haiku, written down like a pseudo-computer language .

Example 2

// T = Time (in minutes) // E = Exportcode // C = Counter E = 2 C = 0 Repeat { X = E 1 st street left 2 nd street right X street left When 2 agents meet { Exchange E C + 1 } Count T 0 to 60 If time = 60 { Abort to Root Print C to socialfiction.org } }

Or in straightforward English:

"Your export code is 2
Repeat the following instructions; walk the first street left, second street right, then you take the street left that is indicated as your export code. Every time you meet another psychogeographer you exchange export codes. This new code will change the 3rth turn.
Remember how often you exchange export code.
When you have walked for one hour you return to the place your are supposed to meet.
Once arrived there report the number of encounters to socialfiction.org."

For this simple talk this would do just as well. But when, like in the examples coming up next, the functions the applet will have to perform are getting more complicated a verbal explanation will require a lot more text of a very dense nature as the instructions must be interpretable in one way only. Symbolic logic serves the purpose of single minded communication much better than any natural language.

All the action happens between the { } after the Repeat command. Also notice that in this applet individual agents participating in an experiment are connected through the exchange of their E (Export code). This is a feature that was not available in the first example but without which it would be impossible to design a psychogeographical computer: an interconnected bunch of small applets, called .walk software (or if you like walkware) that runs (or rather walks) on top of the hardware, the street grid.

Example 3

// Fibonacci .walk // 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ... Z = 1 Z(x) = 0 Repeat { Z Left or right {random} Z(y) = Z Z = Z + Z(x) Z(x) = Z(y) }

In example 3 we start to see the power of writing down the rules for algorithmic walks in symbolized rather than plain English.
This applets differs considerably from the 2 examples above;
First: there is no succession of turns, there is only one turn that can be left or right that because of the {random} command can be chosen by the agent.
So when Z(x) = 5 the psychogeographer enters the fifth street. When this street happens to be at a crossing with both options available take the one you like.
Second: this applet computes it's own next turn. In example 3 this happens according to the Fibonacci number series.
This series is infinite & following this .walk applet to it's logical conclusions must soon becomes surrealistic, if not downright absurd.

Example 4

// Divide.walk // 8/2 // C = Counter A = 8 B = 2 C = 0 E = B Repeat { If E = A { Abort Print C to socialfiction.org } C = (C+1) C street left or right {random} E = (E+B) }

Everybody knows by heart that 8 divided by 2 gives 4, but only Slashdot creeps can divide 19 by 6 from the top of their head & come up with the correct answer of 3,1666... With the applet in the next example you can just do this kind of calculations. This does mean the introduction of decimals.

In example 4, C (counter) counts the times it take to divide a number, that is the answer to the problem 8/2, C also determines the next turn. Every variable could be used to determine this, but using the counter makes this count easier to remember especially when the outcome becomes higher this might be handy.

Example 5

// Divide.walk // 19/6 // C = Counter A = 19 B = 6 C = 0 Cdiv = 0 Q = 1 E = B Turn_X = 0 Repeat { If E > A { E = (E-B) A = (A-E) A = (A*10) Q = (Q*10) E = B Turn_X = 0 } Cdiv = 1/Q C = (C+Cdiv) Turn_X = Turn_X + (Cdiv*Q) If E = A { Abort Print C to socialfiction.org } Turn_X street left or right {random} E = (E+B) }

The walk in this case means taking sequences of turns, first the 1st to the 3rd left or right, then the first left or right, then infinite clusters of the 1st to the 6th turn left or right. The comma is always behind the first cluster.

Remember that the syntax of these .walk is not fixed. Applets can be written in any way, can mimic any known computer language. It would be worthwhile to think of a way of formulating statements/rules that don't resemble the languages used in the ordinary computer world, this would stress that .walk is not merely an offshoot of something that is already existing but that it is a whole new field of research.

This last applet shows how pedestrian activity can be made to function as a non electrical computer, able to perform difficult calculations while the agent walking it doesn't need any mathematical skill at all. .Walk is not only meant to platform independent it should also be designed in such a way that everybody can execute any applet.
At the same time the walkware is still producing non-intuitive routes for urban exploration that is it's main function. By connecting different applets, all executing their own rules, doing computations in the meantime, a giant psychogeographical computer emerges.

The first experiments in executing .walk software were done with variations on example 2. The main goal was to find out the frequency of agents crossing paths during an experiment.
The higher the frequency the easier data generated by the individual agents are spread through the network, this adds speed to the processing power which is in itself correlated to the number of agents involved at any given time.
The pace of the psychogeographers is another crucial factor in the speed of calculations.
From past experiments it has been determined that with small groups (8 simultaneous applets active in Rotterdam [Nov. 2002], 6 in Londen [Dec 2002]) the number of encounters that take place in one hour are rather low: only once twice, often only once & just as often no encounters at all take place. This calls for separate .walk applets that don't compute anything themselves but gather & transfer data through the different nodes of the Psychogeographical Computer. This might be done by giving them rules that are responding to the movement of the other agents. Because past experiments showed that generative psychogeographical walks doesn't result in crossing enormous distances, but rather a circular movement around an schizoid sort of imaginary axis, these agents might employ the tactic of patience to locate the others.

From here .walk can be used to construct walkware like peripatetic databases, psychogeographical artificial memory, or .walked calculations can be fed to software that renders visuals, sound or behaviour.