Balearic Routes + Routines proposed a group action in the center of Palma on 18 october 2008. Departing from the hectic Plaça Major, we walked with 10 people through the shopping center, scanning electro magnetic fields, sniffing video surveillance and wifi TV, amplifying distorted sounds from the souls of our feet, filming with camera equiped shoe’s, and more nifty out of the ordinary ways of capturing data produced by walking.

Here’s a video capturing some of the highlights of the day. (Ogg/theora, 20 mb)

Here’s another one, with snapshots taken from the rotating mirrors shoe.
(Avi, 700k)

(Video doesn’t play in browser? Install VLC, right-click, save file, open in VLC)

Balearic Routes + Routines takes place in the framwork of the Majorcan media festival PING!, taking place in cultural center Sa Taronja in Andratx.

In the framework of the Open Source Architecture module of the KHLIM Genk Media design course, students followed a workshop around the soon to be redeveloped train station of Hasselt. Loosely based on the work of the delicious Francis Alys, many elegant situationist performances, the exquisite Sophie Calle and lets not forget the delightful Christopher Nolan, I prepared three short exercises.

1: Walking in someone elses footsteps

While walking through the station you are listening to a recording of a walk through a park. (Download here; mp3, 12mb ) The paste of the walk you are hearing is steady and unbroken. Play the sound loud, step into the rhythm, and don’t stop until the file ends. Your paste is influenced several factors: are you walking alone or in a dense crowd? What surface are you walking on, how is the infrastructure, roads, traffic, buildings? What shoes are you wearing … and let’s not forget: your body. The length of your legs, do they match the ones of the original walker, can you keep up with him? what is your physical condition? Fit enough to transpose a walk through the park to a busy railway station?

download ogg/theora movie 4.8 mb
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2: Identify with others
Copy behavior of people you meet in the street. Select the people you follow by a feature they have in common. For example: follow only people with red shoes. Of every person you meet wearing red shoes, you imitate, copy, and embody one specific gesture or movement. Be like a sponge, add them up, incorporate them in your walk. Make small loops: repeat the movements, improvise and construct coherent movements out of the collaged gestures, behaviors and moves. Your final character looks nothing like the original people you imitated. You have created a new, extravagant persona, acting extraordinary, and very probably not wearing red shoes.

download ogg/theora movie 5 mb
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3 Follow blind
Walk in teams of two. One person is leading the other following with closed eyes. You don’t speak. The person leading guides the follower with th sound of him / her footsteps. In a silent place: step gentle, in a place bursting with sounds: stamp like a madman, kick against dustbins, make a noise. Experiment with speeds, proximity to passers by, smell and disorienting elements.