‘For fucks sake get a life’ she yelled as he honks at her with violence. She can see the white in his eyes. She hadn’t planned to cross the line, but now that she accidentally did – she owns up to it. This is public space and she is definitely public. The time her luxury, the space her sanctuary and he just entered her church. She is it. A true pedestrian.
When she finds the white role in her pocket feeling the heavy fabric in her palm she stops shaking. It unrolls with a ‘fffffflapp’ and sails to the ground in an instant assimilating with its environment. It’s official now. This time she redrew the line – not cross it. So we can all go back on the road. Together.
Project Description
Where and how we walk is always evolving. While route choices seem personal, they’re influenced by social and technical factors—this is the essence of Gångbart: the Technopolitics of walking.
Commissioned by ArkDes Stockholms Architecture and Design Museum lead by the brilliant Olle Lundin for the re-opening of the museum we establish a series of interventions to showcase the work of ‘Gångbart – the Technopolitics of walking’ an ongoing research project by Martin Emanuel, Daniel Normark and Will Hilliard. The research seeks to contribute to a greater understanding of walking, its role in the creation of public spaces, and the possibilities for its renaissance in European cities. It is done by examining the tension during the 20th century between different ways of controlling pedestrians and actual walking practices in Stockholm and Copenhagen. By focussing on different kinds of material and technological control of pedestrians, the means of sidewalks, traffic signals, pedestrian streets and other we enter the world of the pedestrian.
Title : Oracle Walks
Year : 2024
Role : Experience Designer
Is : bringing it back to the streets
Should be : Taking space
Will : Help you find your way
Background
Based on a co-creative process we moved through different stages sharing research and references, establishing areas of interests, extrapolate key findings and fold the extensive research material into activations and pieces for different contexts and a series of events. Engaging participants to explore pedestrianism as rich history of our social norms and etiquettes we try to actively think about our experience in the city, the qualities we miss, the behaviours we would like to establish attempting a social fabric we would like to weave in the Future.
Oracle Walks
What if you could choose your walking route not just based on efficiency but on the path with the most benches, the greenest trails, or the best break up spots? What would you want to avoid or discover when time efficiency is the only guiding principle? How would you like to feel on your route?
Oracle Walks, uses artificial intelligence, to offer unique ways to explore your surroundings and aims to provide access to new ways of walking.
As online tool we invite participants to prompt their personal routes and receive maps to follow these new paths. With these inputs a new baseline for research is created while following the AI evolving in its outputs.
A set of Tarot cards is helping to show research findings and illustrate not just where we walk but suggest new ways of owning and exploring the street. Are you leading the way or are lead by others? Are you mindful or a hustler? How are you walking if you could explore new ways of roaming the city.
The online tool was developed with Thomas Walther.
Explore it on:
And find all collected maps here:
Photos
