Scripts to read the city

By reading we mean finding another possible form of seeing, moving, listening

The project imagines an urban environment that can be read, analyzed and criticized as a text. By reading the city in this way we find other possible ways of seeing, moving and listening. In a scripted city, marked by escalating levels of perfection, efficiency and control, the emancipatory aspects of urban life are undermined, allowing little room for anything that doesn't fit the image of the "norm".

Scripts to Read the City is an attempt to foster diverse experiences and uses of space, similar to a theater script interpreted differently by each actor. The tools of navigation are a device indicating which character to play and a guide, including a set of directions and instructions.

The project explores a relation between scripts and spontaneity, chance and control, and how scripts and unpredictability can enhance each other, stimulating imagination, encouraging us to engage with space from another perspective.

About

What is it?

a device

• device can be used to observe and to listen to
• has a shape of a tube that can be carried with you and accompany your walk
• assignes a character to follow, based on the built in tilt sensor that measure steps

a printed guide

• includes a manual for the device
• collect scripts
• template to make your own paper device
• template to write your own script

workshop

• project presentation
• make your own device
• a walk to perform scripts
• scripts writing
• feedback

Context

This project is part of the Special Issue 24 - of Experimental Publishing. This past three months were dedicated to explore together the possibilities to compute and publish while being outdoors. During this special issue we were experimenting with loitering as a method to do research in and about the city.

There are so many written and unwritten rules, the city is full with order, constantly navigating or forbidding.

If you can realise the rules you can build something that hacks into it, and the first step for this is just paying attention. So we spent the last 3 months walking, listening, observing to create our own set of rules to structure a new experience. Many services and "smart solutions" provide comfort but also drastically reduce the level of unpredictability in a city. In a highly scripted cities, filled with prohibitions, navigations, we asked ourselves, how can we use scripts to enforce and strenghten unpredictability.