I’ve just started playing with Serendipitor, an iPhone app which takes the A-to-B efficiency of Google Maps and adds a delightful random element in an attempt to induce random discoveries.
Functionally, it’s very simple: enter a start and end point, indicate how much time you’ve got by making the route more or less complicated, and then hit start. This is where the app deviates from Google Maps brutal shortest-distance simplicity. Drawing heavily on the work of a number of situationist artists including Yoko Ono and Vito Acconci (whose psychogeographical work “following piece” this most resembles), the app then gives the user random instructions at key waypoints.
I used it to navigate from the office to the sandwich shop on Lamb’s Conduit Street. The instructions look like this:
In all probability, this will be an app with a very limited user base, and even then, I can’t imagine many people (well, Londoners at least) taking it up on its suggestion to buy a flower, give it to a stranger and then take their photograph. But I really like the way it’s taking digital functionality and adding a layer of “obliquity” to engineer random discoveries.
In a planning meeting earlier today we were discussing how a brief is useful not merely as a set of loose instructions for creative guidance, but also as a checklist for a planner to ensure they’ve left no stone unturned. I’d like to see an element of randomness added to this rigour—perhaps something like the Oblique Strategy cards developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt, or the random suggestions of Serendipitor, because creative thinking needs a constant supply of random mutations if it’s to evolve and flourish.
The Surprise Manifesto 