With hungry predators hovering nearby, the little birds must converge, flocking together, in an attempt to confuse the sparrowhawks, buzzards and peregrine falcons. [...] Each starling tracks seven other birds – irrespective of distance – which produces the group’s aerial ballet.
[all images> "Murmurations" of starlings at Gretna, Anglo-Scottish border_November 2011 via dailymail]
< Because words pass, then; because they pass away, metamorphose, become “passers” or vehicles of ideas along unforeseen channels not calculated in advance, the expression “passwords” seems to me to enable us to reapprehend things, both by crystallizing them and by situating them in an open, panoramic perspective. > [Jean Baudrillard, Passwords]
After the spread of cholera in 1854, John Snow decided to map the deaths around London’s Broad Street. The fact of linking the reported cases after the outbreak to the location of the dead’s houses proved that they had a strong link to a public drinking water pump. Those who had used that pump had a higher chance of contracting the disease. This primitive spatial analysis took to pieces the theory that cholera was connected to pestilent air rather than drinking waters infected by sewage. And as a matter of fact, it led to stop the practice of simply draining human wastewaters into the River Thames, which was to be drunk later by citizens.
Charting unnoticed relations reveal a hidden city visible. For Simon Elvins in his map Silent London, black dots represent the most peaceful spaces in the city according to government measurements, whereas noisy areas fade into blank voids, and vanish. He applies the same principle to his other version, similar to Braille codification in its form. Sound levels alter the two dimensional paper and silence is associated with higher dots. Our reading finger can only perceive the quietest areas in the city.
Snow dealt with deaths and Elvins with silence as passwords to access an encrypted city. But street limits can also be replaced by words. Layla Curtis deletes any spatial references in her London Index Drawing. Street names configure space and its density. Words overlap and stretch and it is still easy to identify the structure of the city. Automatically, one can imagine what sort of lane; street, bridge, square or mews one is travelling through with his eyes.
< The map, as a scaled replica of the entire city, presents a choice to its maker: not what to include, but rather, what to exclude. > [Simon Foxell]
3 London mappings compiled in FOXELL, S 2007, Mapping London – Making Sense of the City, Black Dog Publishing, London.
[1> Dr John Snow, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, 1855_fragment via history of vaccines] [2,3> Simon Elvin_Silent London_fragments via arkinet][4> Layla Curtis_London Index Drawing 2007]
In an impressive way to take a last journey to cease existence, Julijonas Urbonas embarks us on a roller coaster which provokes a lack of oxygen supply to the brain, by riding at a maximal speed of 100 m/s. For those who decide to stop living under unbearable pain, this assisted dérive can teleport them into a gratifying last emotion far away from a conventional gloomy hospital:
“Euthanasia Coaster” is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely – with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being. Riding the coaster’s track, the rider is subjected to a series of intensive motion elements that induce various unique experiences: from euphoria to thrill, and from tunnel vision to loss of consciousness, and, eventually, death. Thanks to the marriage of the advanced cross-disciplinary research in space medicine, mechanical engineering, material technologies and, of course, gravity, the fatal journey is made pleasing, elegant and meaningful. Celebrating the limits of the human body but also the liberation from the horizontal life, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ is in fact the ultimate roller coaster…”
Developed at the Design Interactions Research Department of the RCA London – which focuses on exploring interactions between people, science and technology – Urbonas’ device also matches the aim of the department of going beyond simply making technology sexy, easy to use and more consumable; instead, they rather focus on using the language of design to pose questions, inspire, and provoke — to transport our imaginations into parallel but possible worlds.
[all images>Julijonas Urbonas, Euthanasia Coaster, 2010]
When living in an archipelago of multiple isolated nodes, linking routes are far more relevant than specific sites.
Tiny islands can be reduced to dots, and seaways become virtual lines. The actual movement of the ocean is what eventually determines mobility. Invented as an everyday tool to commute between Marshall Islands, Stick Charts are maps representing islands, swells and currents.
The whole archipelago unity is conceived from navigating parameters. Islands, more than places, are modifiers of water flows, making the ocean dodge their footprint; swells and counter-swells. Therefore, vessels need to know them, in order to sail with or against. Rilib, Kaelib, Bungdockerik, Bungdockeing; for junior sailors (Mattang) or for seniors (Meddo).
Stick charts visualize these disruptions of flow patterns by means of curved palm ribs tied with coconut fiber; little shells locating islands are attached to them. However, Marshall maps of flows are not to be taken with. Locals were used to memorize them before departure, avoiding constant consultation while navigating.
[more> On sea charts formerly used in the Marshall Islands, with notices on the navigation of these islanders in general (by Captain Winkler 1901 via pruned]
[1-3> via janesoceania][4> via makezine][5,6> via Cambridge University Library][7> via thenonist]
“He had brought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.”
The Hunting of the Snark – An agony in 8 fits (Lewis Carroll, 1874) is an imaginary poem depicting the ship voyage of eight B-named characters (Bellman, Butcher, Baker, Banker, Bonnet-maker, Barrister, Broker, Boots, Billiard-maker) and a Beaver. To guide themselves to an island, where they should hunt a Snark, they use a blank sheet of paper as a map of the ocean they can all understand; no land, no coordinates, no marine topography.
Simply compass points amidst a white infinite, scaled in miles.
It is snowing in Berlin. -7°C today. Once the long unpicked autumn leaves are already gone, streets will be soon completely covered in white. Like every year, sidewalks will also be covered with tiny gravel, an ecological anti-sliding substitute to salt; an unpleasant room-mate for the whole season, attached to one´s shoes until spring blossoms.
Gravel is spread out on mostly transited paths, resulting in streets becoming eventually much narrower. It is hard to leave the safe path! Gravel has then the power of shrinking a city, of limiting our everyday walks…
And I find Nathan Abels´ photographs capturing aerial snapshots from cattle wandering trajectories in Colorado Estate. Moving towards their feeding troughs, animals also draw their desire paths. But in that case, food makes shortcuts clearly appear, as an attraction pole. Their safest path is the shortest distance.
(images> snow desire paths by Nathan Abels via minutiae)
Charles de Fourcroy, Enlightened French Mathematician, wrote his treatise on a Tableau Poléometrique in 1782. He analyzed urban growth, by means of graphics comparing extension of main European cities with their amount of inhabitants.
But the time, when the logic of urban morphology was linked to colonial interests, became radically obsolete with situationist approaches towards un-mapping the city a few decades ago. Inheriting these procedures, urbain trop urbain featured Armelle Caron‘s works on decoding the blocks surrounding us; she identifies, classifies and organizes every city block from NewYork, Paris or Berlin, according to their size/shape.
In this way, Caron reveals a hidden experience to any pedestrian, by reshaping the banality of diverse urban fabrics. She translates them into a sort of notes on a score. And in this score, one can re-read the rhythm of a city with rectangular blocks, mega-blocks, super-blocks, medieval corners, triangular Baroque language, or longitudinal coastal strips.
[image1> Tableau Poléométrique via dataArt] [images2-4> Armelle Caron's Villes Rangées via urbain trop urbain]
Two rivers meet each other in Manaus, the capital of Brazilian Amazonas State: Rio Negro (Black River) and Amazon River. But Rio Negro had such dark waters, that 19th century eccentric rubber barons preferred to send their clothes back to Europe for laundry service.
Extravagance was as unendless as the economical profits that conquistadores made out of the rubber trees. Manaus city boosted as an Opera Capriccio of one of them, who decided to bring Enrico Caruso’s works to the middle of the jungle. This scene is depicted in Werner Herzog’s movie Fitzcarraldo, where one baron succeeds in making a ship cross from one river to another by climbing up and down a 40º hill, by previous deforestation of the area.That’s how the baron’s slaves open a new trade route to revalue unproductive sectors.
Today, Manaus hosts a world-wide referent Opera Festival. But unfortunately, former capitalist follies, which once made the city grow, only perform fantastic journeys on stage.
thanks laura!
[image1> Werner Herzog's ship through the jungle via coffeewithanarchitect] [image2> Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo via moviecritic] [image3> Rio Negro meets Amazon River via wikipedia]
finally, the graphic result of the seoul series exploration is released. a map describing the way in which the city was explored during 5 days of my situationist dérive, following 50 different spontaneous agents/strategies. the graphics are a mixture of ancient Korean 2D/3D mapping techniques, and spatial scale is replaced by timing.
[click to enlarge]
[image by deconcrete2010]
It is astonishing the numerous amount of elderly couples I have been seeing in the subway, wearing a complete neon-colour camouflage trekking equipment. Since Seoul is surrounded (rather gobbled up) by hills, its subway system easily reaches any forest at the end of its lines to enjoy nature just half an hour ride from schizophrenic urbanity. So my last wandering in Seoul is going to be natural; I need some greenery. While looking for other Korean architecture blogs, I came up with the project of regeneration of a forest by ludens-ifying it with hidden art installations amongst trees. It’s my place.
Before coming out at a random periphery subway station, I get lost in an interchange, where I suddenly find in the basement 3 a compass rose printed on the floor, north-oriented; a paradox of unguideness in this messy maze of underground staircases. Once outside, I am guided by a beautifully clear drawing that the newspaper-kiosk seller has made in my notebook. And while walking, I start finding aliens in the forest, where people are cheerfully picnicking in, around, above or around…
In this forest I found by sheer chance one of my favourite fetish hybrids: the ramp-stairs: a mix between a diagonal surface and conventional steps, to be used in many forms. Parent and Virilio already exposed the possibilities of freely squatting an oblique surface some decades ago (memories of my architecture master thesis, exactly two Junes ago now!). So before leaving the city, I grant myself with the only two architectural sins in this trip of spontaneous everyday detours; two pieces of open voids where people inhabit and appropriate themselves of a diagonal circulation.
First, another ramp-stairs system by OMA inside a Museum (more elegant than the Chicagoan ones) and staircase outside it, and second, the hole excavated as a plaza/corridor by Perrault at a University campus. While the former is a C-shape covering of an existing uphill circulation between a bus stop and the campus, the latter is a U-shape turning an open-air oblique corridor into a meeting area. I am glad that both cases seem almost more successful in their void condition than the own function of the building beside them.
Exhausted I sit down for a break in a sudden tiny café back somewhere in town, 3.5 m2 big, at twilight, and find a Surrealist illustrated story by Edward Gorey, The Object Lesson, lying also on a tiny shelf; an exquisite dark tale about absences, missed connections, dreams and surreptitious absurdities. Originally printed in 1958, it appeared the same year as other surrealist inventors dreamt of re-reading the city.
Here, the Seoul Series end.
[images 1-4> Seoul Art Park] [image5>compass rose on the floor of the basement 3 of a subway station] [image6> OMA's Museum of Art, Seoul Nationalal University] [image7> Perrault's Ewha Women's University Campus, Seoul] [all images by deconcrete2010]
Soaring temperatures make a sea of white shirts appear in the CBD of Seoul at noon. It is Monday lunchtime and this isolated area of the city (literally an island) dedicated to finance becomes invaded. Although clothing stores at the groundfloors of corporate buildings advertise only Westerners wearing suits, I hardly see any of them in the real world.
This recently planned area starts being invaded by alien skyscrapers blossoming all around, and despite not existing any sense of a lively city, the fact of finding several 24h kimchi-sushi restaurants, makes me remind that Koreans are amongst the ones with most working hours in the world.
It is impossible to follow anyone randomly. Any try makes me follow workers to an eating place or back to the office. Bored of these non-productive routines and being stuck at the main crossing, I almost feel obliged, first to go also for lunch, and second, to move on to another neighbourhood.
Eager to visit the Rainbow Cathedral, an art installation somewhere in Seoul that I read via newsletter some time ago, I take the subway to that station. After appearing in an anodyne huge crossing, I realize I mistook the line; so asking everybody for a rainbow in the street is a fruitless desperate operation. This makes me go into a PC room (or an Internet Cafe in a stinky basement full with video-games freaks) and check the map for the first time in Seoul and explore these anodyne highways while walking to the exhibition.
I discover then a network of anonymously big crossings, where 5&5 lane highways intersect each other. the city in-between is as dull as the crossings themselves, making these crossroads the most exciting points. There is a gap of 300 to 400 metres between each other and surprisingly all of them have quite a big slope separating these valleys, reminding me of San Francisco, and making me walk up and down, up and down, up and down, again and again… It takes me 5 crossroads to realize that Mondays do not like art exhibitions and another 3 to find the nearest subway station.
While detouring the city in the most explorer-related sense, leaving all outdated Situationist politics aside, it is very useful to use the subway map in order to make the city even more abstract. Like transnational geographies, moving from one point to another and forgetting what lies in-between, either if is a street block or a whole country, turns the city into a virtual cloud of scattered situations.
After seeing my seventh golf course flying over a carparking and the third soldier carrying a cosmetics bag, I cannot find any office worker going for dinner in his white shirt. but it is time for me to do so.
The whole lighting neighbourhood is turned off. It’s Sunday morning in Seoul and this whole industrial district providing any kind of electric component is closed. The beautiful Seun Arcade, an immensely long concrete building threats demolition, for the sake of a green park; the city thinks that turning derelict structures from the 1960s into open parks is a magic formula for political success.
Today my psychogeographical strategy has more to do with psychopath than with psychological geographies (or psycho-paths). Instead of following random people to be guided through new parts of the city, I choose and chase my prey imagining his story beforehand. I also used to do this when making crosswords; imagining simple stories of why the author would have chosen that word that day.
The first individual results to be a baseball player leading me to a hidden field; the second is a Japanese/Korean student memorising words all her way and the third notices that I am following his bag with the printed word Tokyo, and starts a kind of zig-zag play by changing direction at every corner. After a while, he is getting nervous, so I decide to quit: I have arrived to a very interesting area.
My psycho-instinct takes me to the National Cemetery subway station after seeing a huge sign. It is Sunday morning, and it is full of elderly people. But instead of having a depressive ambiance, families gather joyfully for a picnic at his ancestors’. This place is a mix between a National memorial to war victims, and a meeting point to celebrate life. Corpses are mere numbers in a vast extension of rationally ordered graves. And I suddenly remember this Situationist game of interchanging graves, putting the Peter’s one at Mary’s, and Mary’s at Steven’s…
After this carparking-like park, I discovered a new area, by following the Japanese student. It is a wasteland under an elevated highway among railway tracks. Dozens of disabled veterans (having been or not involved with war) wander around this creepy post-apocalyptic place. The fact that there is a charity open air canteen, gathers people all together. It is shocking to change from this panorama to the lavish Ferraris lane I find some stations away, guided by the guy carrying the Tokyo bag. I am not interested in street names, so I rename them myself, depending on what I live or find there: only luxury vehicles!
This makes me think of the linear map I am producing of Seoul. It needs to be connected to place and psychological perception (phenomenology), but also Time is basic.
The map of my city and the city will both end as soon as I give up moving and the drawing line ends. The rest of the existing city, probably 90% of the surface, which i have not detoured, do not need to be represented. It does not exist for me. And I learn that whenever a city does not show up with any new attractive corner, anything new to discover, it is not worth living there any longer. Provocation is then dead.
Second day of derive: the fact that Saturday is traditionally the leisure day, has also made the people I was following in Seoul, to take me to shopping districts, or accidentally monumental spots; these were anyway lying one next to each other: trendy consumption together with culture origins.
Walking along lanes filled up with multitude of clothing stores, in between I meet Korean folk dances all along, or an spontaneous taekwondo show, or a procession of Royal guards in traditional costumes, or a replica of a traditional village, or a woman handing brochures for a religious sect asking me whether I need spiritual comfort f0r my depression. (do I look so depressed?!) The answer is a sign I find later wondering whether I am bored!
I discover a network of back alleys, which were originally built for common people in order not to walk along the main street, since they would be obliged to kneel down whenever a Lord walk by. So these alleys turned into lively spots for the everyday avoiding imposed protocols.
Suddenly Berlin appears in front of me! Five years ago, the city gave a piece of the Wall to Seoul, trying to achieve a peaceful reunification of the two Koreas. Just in front, I found the Canal. If yesterday some alleys remind me of Tokyo, now I have landed back in Kreuzberg, but with cleaner waters. The city has destroyed the 1950s highway, in order to recover the historical river which used to cross the city, and give it back to citizens. A project which pushed the Major of the City become the Prime Minister of the country. Should Shanghai recover its dried up network of channels as well?
For a moment, I decide to make the pre-fab Chinese City prototype guide me, and leave my derivators aside. Ancient Seoul copied their philosophy in order to plan their own urban grid. So as soon as I see the Gate to the Imperial Palace, with the river at my back a mountain in front, I prove that I am in the North-South fengshui axis. I didn’t want to use cardinal points, but I needed to prove whether an Empire transported the same urban concept to all its conquers.
To finish the day, I let one business card from an amazingly crazy shop guide me to their other branch somewhere in the city. After one hour of lost paths, I end up in an over-pretentiously designed area, where it seems to be a Tokyo-like competition going on about who has the weirdest haircut. a whole street with cafes and cafes and cafes and cafes…
enough for today.
Arrived in Seoul. An endless railway bridge crosses from the airport island to mainland peninsula. the left side of my ride is an esplanade of mud, whereas sea water covers the right side landscape. there is time to imagine flooding and emptying cities with water.
The first journey of the series starts with Shanghai’s map. i draw every movement on my spontaneous itinerary into it. but after a whole day of virtual abstractions, it does not make sense any more for me. sorry, Debord, but this situationist strategy n.1 forces me to an unpleasant derive. so i decide to give it up, and shift to strategy n.2> being guided by other derivators or citizens that I just intituively follow.
I choose my prey, follow it, I can even smell it in short distance, and afterwards discard it until either I find something interesting or I loose it in a crowd. some go into buildings, others meet people, others seem too lost…
This strategy is going to produce a graphic linear map of the city, out of the situations I experience, directly related to a specific time. north, south, east and west do not count any more; but references are only visual instead of linking portions of the city. a sort of conceptually moving city, as ancient Mayas did along the Mexican jungle, discarding what has been left behind.
found situations:
* a golf course covering a parking. the oblique net allows balls return back to players and works as shadowing for cars.
* Women’s University: a whole neighbourhood oriented to female cultural, commercial and services consumption.
* non-democratic subway system: instead of a flat-rate, the price of the ticket depends on the amount of stations, making me decide the end of the journey before entering the train. (in case i am legal!)
* French antiques neighbourhood: it seems to be a fever consumption of 19th century bombastic furniture.
* hyper-abundance of Christian churches. I start to wonder, whether the amazingly status of development in this rich Korean society is leading to an increasing soul emptiness; the built form of pure loneliness.
fear of the day> where to sleep. i haven’t seen an economic hotel in the whole day. a girl i ask in a nice cafe offers me to sleep at her place in an extra room. i go with her, we derive together, and after 15 minutes of impossible conversation Lee wants to charge me 80 euros. Just similar to another couple of sex-motels I have tried, so after 3 hours of failed attempts it is time to assume it and go into an Internet basement to find a place before midnight.
once settled, i meet another derivator, who virtually takes me to his favourite club in Seoul. he tells me of a night spent at this top exclusive place, which charge 500 US$ only for the cover. but as he explains, the good part is that you can even go with only one friend (probably one can go there alone) and feel like in a private party. the club has dozens of rooms, where they provide girls you choose, to dance there; neither prostitutes nor gogo dancers; just normal people having a drink in your lonely private party.
so decided, every day I am trying different situationist strategies in my drawing of a graphic linear map of Seoul, out of time moments.
Guy Debord wrote in 1955 about a friend of his having just traveled through the Harz region in Germany, by means of a map of the city of London, whose directions he had blindly followed. [tom mcdonough editing the situationists and the city]
so tomorrow, i’ve decided to flyxperiment to southkorean Seoul and start a 5 day-series of dérive explorations, (un)guided by a map of Shanghai (fully in Chinese). i have no referent of its form, but that both cities have a sort of a main river meeting a smaller one. someone told me that shanghai lacks of a huge mountain in downtown. maybe shanghai turns mountaineous, maybe seoul finds its dreamt urban grid. no idea where to go, to sleep or to eat. but i have a small bag as luggage and loads of excitement with me.
has the day already arrived when some cities are built for dérive, as Debord predicted? next 5 posts, hopefully, from somewhere in seoul.
psychogeographies to be continued…
[image> Vinland map, 1434 AC. speculated version of America's discovery occurring before Columbus's expedition in 1492 AC via bnl]
