"Walk #12," by Gavin Edwards. You can discover the story behind this picture here.
1. Flip a Coin: "Lliving a block away from the World Trade Center site after 9/11, I re-explored lower Manhattan by leaving my house, flipping a coin at every intersection to determine my route," writes photographer and writer Gavin Edwards.
"After exactly one hour, I would stop and take a photograph of where I was. I did 48 of these walks. The '48 Hours from Ground Zero' project resided at an interesting intersection of emotion and binary options; I found that through randomness, I was rewiring my memories."
You can see the pictures and hear the stories of Gavin's coin-flipping walks on his site, RuleFortyTwo.com. (Discovered via Boing Boing, thanks.)
2. Follow that Taco: Last fall, David Fletcher assigned his architecture students to find out where their truck tacos came from. "Our premise was that a seemingly simple, familiar food like the taco truck taco could provide visceral insight into the connections between the systems we were exploring," the collective writes. "By thoroughly learning the process of formation and lifecycle for what it takes to make a taco, we would be better able to propose and design a speculative model of a holistic and sustainable urban future. What resulted was a richly complex network of systems, flows and ecologies that we call the global Tacoshed." Here's the visual result:
Want to discover more about where your tacos come from and how that shapes your city? If you live in the Bay Area, the Studio for Urban Projects will host a talk about the Tacoshed project on Thursday, February 25th, 7pm.
3. Listen to a Cellphone Audio Tour (or Create One Yourself): "Murmur, a new project that is ostensibly an audio tour of the city, was recently launched, providing cell phone access to the little nuggets of history that give a community its flavor, ranging from intimate to obscure to obvious," reports the magazine Shelterforce. "Participants simply walk down the street, look for the telltale Murmur sign in front of a building or a landmark, and dial in. The stories, produced by nine students at Orange High School... provide a look at a town that has, like many of New Jersey’s urban areas, seen its highs and lows." This is a terrific idea, something that anyone can create and anyone can listen to.
If you go to the Murmur site, you'll see the map above--and if you click on one of the red dots, you'll hear a story about that place. An amazing project.
How do you like to explore cities?
Comments
Laura wrote on 02.24.10, 3:12pm:
Number 2 is especially fun if you wear a trenchcoat and fedora.
Jeremy Adam Smith wrote on 02.24.10, 3:30pm:
Those are great, Laura, thanks. Though I'd hate to be accused of stalking someone...it occurs to me, however, that person-following could be turned into an organized event. Some service similar to CouchSurfing (with similar trust-building mechanisms) matches you to someone who wants to be followed. You follow that person through their day, and then write up a private-detective style report, which is posted anonymously online. People would strive to write amusing and entertaining reports, which might be rated upstream; it would be funny to read such a thing about yourself. People being followed might attempt to lose their stalkers, thereby giving everyone's ordinary day a little adrenaline rush, or perhaps they'll deliberately engage in some covert task-- and the detective's job is to figure out the task.
Jeremy Adam Smith
www.jeremyadamsmith.com
cristina wrote on 03.02.10, 1:49pm:
Love that idea! Turning the city into a game, connecting strangers, and discovering new spots all at once. Sign me up!
Omegle Sohbet wrote on 08.21.10, 5:15pm:
People would strive to write amusing and entertaining reports, which might be rated upstream; it would be funny to read such a thing about yourself. People being followed might attempt to lose their stalkers, thereby giving everyone's ordinary day a little adrenaline rush, or perhaps they'll deliberately engage in some covert task-- and the detective's job is to figure out the task.
My favorites/fallbacks:
1. Get on a bike. You feel less trapped by the area you are in, and your mobility allows you to be interested in where you are/what you are passing without getting bogged down by unfamiliar details and sacrificing the sense of grand adventure. Also the most bike friendly areas in a city are also usually the most pedestrian friendly and have the most community built up within them.
2. Follow someone who looks interesting. Pick someone, follow them, and try not to let on. Pretend you are a detective, cross the street, duck behind a tree, studiously examine a shopfront. If they arrive at their destination pick a new person.