social fiction | psychogeography | .walk

REPORT TORONTO WALKS


Socialfiction.org was invited by the Image Festival (10-19 April 2003) in Toronto to take a plane & come do a series of walks. So we did.

EXPERIMENT 1; 12-4-2003;  401 Richmond Street
Method: generative

To prevent all walks ending up in a loop on the sameness of the Toronto grid, the first experiment was done with walk algorithms that contained 4 (instead of the usual 3) directional instructions to enlarge the possible trajectories.

For us this was the first psychogeographical experiment on a grid. The for us most stunning fact was the fractal-like organization of the streets that unfolds itself when you get deeper into the urban fabric of streets & blocks; constructed from a patchwork of huge, crowded streets as the most visible level, that branch of into less broad, less frequently used, streets that reach into the interior of the blocks. These streets in turn branch out into even smaller streets, which in turn are connected to back alleys that might in turn be connected to the main street. By consequently taking short turns the extent of this semi-invisible network hidden behind the facades, only used by those who need to be there, becomes clear. Due to the lack of detail on the map it turned out to be impossible to recap the walks on the map, so unfortunately there is no documentation of this walk.  

The contradiction between the tidy main streets, the less regulated side streets & the rubbish heaps in the alleys is big & as we were told, politically engineered. The experiment also showed that you can very well get from one point in the city to any other point without using the main streets other than an occasional crossing, in practise you use the big ones, because it is just more fun. Jane Jacobs ramblings on the importance of a good sideway culture suddenly started to make much more sense.


EXPERIMENT 2; 16-4-2003; 1319 Bloor West
Method: .walk

This experiment was the most ambitious .walk done this far.
Here is the .walk script executed    

// WALKING APART TOGETHER
// HEX-DATA CUT-UP
// SOCIALFICTION.ORG


// W=Workfield;; O=Recordfield;; P=Position;; D=Direction;; S=Self;; O=Other

Def W
{


E0CA B793 F2D3 A5E4 98C8 9885 6FA9 1CCC 4532 BEF4 DDFA
0FA4 31BC D326

}

Forever

{

Import to agent P[1-4]
Delete W;;P[1-4]

Vector Pn;; P1 to P4
{
If Pn = numerical; D = right
If Pn = alphabetical; D = Left
}

Vector Pn;; P1 P2 P3 P4
{
Run Pn;; random[1,2,3,4] D)
Replace P1 (random at corner)
Print P1 to R
}

When meet
{
parse RS P[1-4] to WO P[1-4]
}

W empty?
{
Transport R[1-4] to W[1-4]
}

Record R
{





}

}


In the 'W' field of every .walk script was placed a unique sequence of 4 digit clusters of hex-data taken from a .gif of a map of Toronto.

The .walk script processed these digits into different ones, as well as using them to determine left/right turns. The processed data was then fed back into the image causing all sorts of distortion.
This is the list of the permutations done in the original file, between ( ) the frequency of each permutation. (The geeks might wonder what letters higher up in the alphabet than G are doing in here.
they were not replaced.)

F0D0 > F1D6 (1)
D099 > A811 (2)
4500 > 6492 (5)
0440 > 8950 (3)
D118 > E617 (1)
0A4E > 3C4E (1)
5155 > 4154 (1)
1A2D > 3FYL (2)
F051 > V353 (1)
21DC > 06PN (1)
8035 > 2313 (8)
F037 > V136 (2)
F404 > 5494 (1)
D26A > L15M (1)
884F > 6265 (1)
0C89 > 4P65 (2)
86A2 > 78V2 (3)
8500 > 7566 (4)
3C61 > 9B25 (1)
2D4D > 7A6B (1)
262B > 435S (1)
1823 > 1425 (2)
3D88 > 6S15 (2)
7645 > 3PIN (1)
A939 > K913 (2)

This are the results


the original map


the .walked map

EXPERIMENT 3; 19-04-2003; 84 Nassau Street
Method: the dérive

This last experiment closed the gap between .walk & the Situationists dérive. The situ's once walked around in Paris on a map of London, so in this experiment 25 participants, mostly natives, left in small groups with the task to find Trinity-Bellwoods Park using only the map that was generated by the previous .walk experiment. After an hour the groups would then meet each other again in the park. As you can see the cut-up map is fairly accurate in the middle, but the park is located at a different side of the city than it really is.
Some groups turned out to be shitty map readers because we never saw them again, somebody told us that at not far from were we were several groups did actually meet. But that was certainly not at the right place; that was where we're standing.

they don't get it
they do