For City Stories—a collaborative project by City of Melbourne, Studio Tun Tun and Craig Walker Studios as part of Melbourne Design Week 2023—I created 'Un-Desire Paths'.
We were invited to respond to the City of Melbourne's sensor data, and consider ways we could encourage the public to engage and connect with data stories. I was inspired by pilot programs that used different sensors and data to change lighting around the city.
Desire paths are informal pathways created by pedestrians that carve out routes considered more desirable and convenient than the existing built pathways.
Un-Desire Paths explores the many times I have taken the long way to get home or to my destination at night or early morning. Either because I know there is little or no lighting in that area, or I do not know what is down there at all. Walking around the block instead of straight through the park or a side street, changing sides of the street if I see a group of people in the dark or poorly lit alleyways. Alternatively, I might take another route if I see another woman going that way, so we are together for at least part of our journey. I am not alone in this decision-making process, contrary to creating desire paths, women, non-binary, trans people and people of colour are constantly shifting their behaviour and moving through the world with inconvenience in an attempt to find safety.
I wanted to create an immersive experience, that also encouraged feedback. Vinyl floor decals looped and weaved around the exhibition space, with multi-lingual typography narrating the thoughts that go through my mind when walking in the dark. At the end of the journey are two posters asking exhibition visitors, "where have you felt unsafe" and “what would make you feel safer?”
