C.R.O.W.S Fly East for the Spring Friday 11th March 2011

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Previous CROW walks have for the most part been based on an itinerary
or a themed route – they have been constructed on the basis of a kind
of content. A quasi-random walk was held in an effectively arbitrary
location as a contrast.

A simple game-like system was used in order to decide the path.
Three basic mechanisms were used to determine our route – a fortune
telling fish, a die and a spinning piece of wire. A table of
destinations had been produced which corresponded to the movement of
the fish, so that for example if the head moved we would walk towards
the sun, whereas if the tail moved we would walk in search of a
church. The die was keyed to a simple coding such that a 1 would send
us to the first left, a 2 to the second left, a 3 to the third left, a
4 to the first right, and so on. The spinning bit of wire simply
pointed a direction to walk.

A set of cards had been produced which featured a variety of
descriptions of things we might encounter in an urban environment.
This was in order to give the walk a vague sense of connection to the
world around us. Some were quite specific like a ‘A Group Of
Schoolchildren’, while others were more open to interpretation, such
as ‘Danger!’. The cards were dealt out to the walkers and could be
played whenever a such an item was spotted. This would trigger a
determination of route by fish, die or wire.

We started in a café on the Newtownards Road – a region picked for the
most part because the past run of walks had been clustered around the
city centre, and because a suitably grid-like pattern of streets
surrounded it. Early simulated experiments had shown that a
preponderance of cul-de-sacs would lead to a quite restricted random
route. In essence a purely arbitrary starting point had been chosen.
An initial direction was determined by consulting the magic fish,
which instructed us to walk towards a hill. Outside the café we
followed a minor slope rising to the east.

The first interrupt card to be played was ‘Mural’, and if anything we
were spoilt for choice with them here. A quick roll of the die
instructed us to take the first left, and so we were sent across the
road and onto Dee Street.

A branching side street here – Pansy Street – allowed someone to play
the ‘Smutty Innuendo’ card, and we were once again randomly sent
leftwards by another die roll.

Under the shadows of the cranes we progressed through a 1980’s housing
estate until a ‘Basketball Hoop’ card was played and the wire on a
stick instructed us to tread the dividing line between the industrial
and the housing areas.

‘Lovely Garden’ and ‘Derelict Building’ cards soon followed, but our
route was still somewhat shaped by a lack of  appropriate turnings,
and so we wilfully allowed ourselves to veer off course slightly to
take in a pedestrian underpass and a train station, before finding
ourselves forced back towards the dual carriageway. Here a ‘Vacuous
Advertising’ card allowed us to try and steer ourselves back into a
more pleasant walking environment. Multiple spins of the wire on the
stick were required before it pointed in a direction other than right
back the way we came.

A ‘Passing Bus’ card sent us southwards off the Newtownards Road and
along the peace wall.

Chill weather and passage of time caused us to call a halt here, and a
return to our initial starting point followed, accompanied by
discussion of ways to simplify or streamline the game-like set of
rules.

Whether we encountered a great deal of particular interest may be
debatable, but the system did send us down some paths that we had no
real reason to take.