Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture
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Hacking the unicursal labyrinth
I think mazes are more interesting to draw than to navigate. Draw arcs from each side of a square grid so that they land on the grid point on the opposite side. That produces something interesting. But it’s not a labyrinth. It’s the asymmetry in the procedure that converts the cross-grid-arc motif into a continuous … Continue reading
Wood-wide web
To state the obvious, a tree starts from the ground with a trunk that extends into branches and twigs. You could be excused for thinking that nature is shaped like trees. The primary biological morphology is a root and branch structure. Embryonic cells form into tubes that branch, fold, specialise and merge. The form (morphology) … Continue reading
A thousand insides
Most cities old and new have underground tunnels, passageways, services, and communication systems, many of these conduits are unused and obsolete. I live in a street with a 15 metre deep tunnel that for 21 years had a rail and cable system for hauling goods and passengers along its 1:27 gradient. The tunnel was since … Continue reading
Forked paths
The usual method for creating a puzzle maze is to start with a rectilinear, triangular or radial grid and mark it up with a convoluted route from start to end. Then draw in branches, loops and deviations that make the route less obvious. The challenge for a maze architect is to provide the appearance of … Continue reading
City on a hill
The maze serves as a metaphor for the city. People get lost in the streets, corridors and communication systems of the city. Cities give the appearance of regularity, symmetry, and order, at least on a map. In his description of cities and places, the writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) affirmed that a maze is a … Continue reading
Unicursality
The traditional unicursal maze has no forking paths but leads directly to its centre. As a drawing or ornamental pattern you imagine the lines are walls and trace your finger through the opening. You eventually arrive at the centre, through a series of left and right turns. There’s just one path through the intestines of … Continue reading
Infinite souq
Retractable queue barriers funnel airport passengers in twisted but orderly lines. These security labyrinths manage large numbers of people within a confined space. They also keep people on the move, turning compliant travellers into unceremonious processionalists. Umberto Eco thinks the detective story is like a labyrinth. He identified 3 types of labyrinth: the kind that … Continue reading
Escapology 101
Biologists and animal behaviourists refer to their study of escape responses as escapology. Fish, cockroaches and higher animals move at speed in a direction away from an immediate threat from a predator, but not always, and not directly. The direction of the escape travel depends on the lay of the land, the position of likely … Continue reading
The dark net wilderness
“There are darker things beyond the Wall,” said Catelyn in George Martin’s A Game of Thrones (22). That’s the bleak wilderness where the wildings live, an uncharted landscape, dangerous, of uncertain extent, and a symbol of the darker reaches of the untamed unconscious. You venture into the wilderness from the safe confines of civility. Hopefully you … Continue reading
What’s the point of symbols?
Symbols are getting a bad name. More precisely, symbols of bad things are gaining more airtime than symbols of good things — lately. Take for example walls. Last month Andrew Solomon wrote in the Guardian “Walls are concrete symbols of exclusion, and exclusion is seldom a diplomatic move.” There’s the prospect of a wall at Calais to curb … Continue reading
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