Mark Shepard Leads Serendipitous Walk in Louisville
Mark Shepard (2009 Emerging Fields), one of the five artists who presented with Creative Capital President Ruby Lerner at IdeaFestival in September, led a group of festival-goers on a meandering walk through downtown Louisville using the Serendipitor smart-phone app that he developed. Here’s Mark’s great description of the app: “In the near-future, finding our way from point A to point B will not be the problem. Maintaining consciousness of what happens along the way might be more difficult. Serendipitor is an alternative navigation app for the iPhone that helps you find something by looking for something else.
Combining computer generated walking directions with instructions for movement and action inspired by Fluxus, Vito Acconci and Yoko Ono (among others), the app attempts to produce short detours and small slippages within an otherwise optimal and efficient route directing movement through the city.”
Mark created a Louisville-based version of the app for IdeaFest. Serendipitor gives users step-by-step navigation that include actions the walker might take along the way. One of our favorites from the Louisville walk: “Head northeast, then pick a person to follow for two blocks” and “Find the heart of the city. If it doesn’t have one, give it one.”
Serendipitor is part of Mark’s Creative Capital-supported project, Sentient City Survival Kit—a collection of artifacts for survival in the near-future sentient city that critically explore the evolving relation between ubiquitous computing, architecture and urban space.