Trying to track the individual paths that crosses the urban territory. This is what Footprint Mapping, developed by Noriyuki Fujimura, does. It’s focused on the relationship between interactive art and public spaces. Footprint is a system configured for the control of metropolitan dérive. Through a pedometer, a digital compass, a microprocessor, a webcam and a laptop, the system is able to photograph and store the paths of the voluntary participants. Buildings, metro stations and squares are controlled with webcams from the top. The laptop elaborates the data and the flow of pictures, generating a real time collage, in order to let every participant follow his own path. At the end of the day, the artist tries to compose the path of every participant in a single collage. With a clear reference to psychogeographical studies, Footprint enhances the influences made by urban territory on personal sensations, and at the same time how these elements shapes that kind of geography. The improvised flaneur, then, explores the urban territory deconstructing suburban spaces through the dérive technique, or letting himself go through the surrounding ambient’s stimuli and choosing in a non-rational way the path to follow. A favorable consequence of this conscious loss in the hidden urban territory is to reach in the end what has been defined as an “emotional disorientation” provoked by practices like looking at a known environmental context or a known quarter but never attentively observed.

Francesca Tomassini