Since I launched this website on facebook last night, I’ve gotten some interesting feedback and questions. I wanted to talk a bit about them here so that they don’t get lost in the social networking abyss.
Stephen Slemon asked: “Can you find desire lines on stuff that isn’t growing – i.e. on concrete or asphalt?”
And Chalundrai Grant had a related question: “If the lines are not as pronounced does that automatically make them not as desirable?”
It would be pretty easy for me to answer both these questions with “I don’t know.” And it would be an honest answer too. But not a helpful one – to them, or to me in my research. So, I’m going to speculate a bit.
Can you find desire lines crossing, for example, a concrete plaza? The biggest thing to consider here, I think, is the fact that you can’t see the paths that are made. But that doesn’t mean that habitual paths don’t exist. I can imagine that a diagonal across a square plaza might be a popular path, just as diagonal desire lines are often seen cutting across grassy parks. I also imagine that the sort of miniature-desire-line corner-cutting that I mentioned in my previous post would be seen on such a surface. But I’m less certain about whether more exploratory desire lines might be seen – as Chalundrai asked, is part of the appeal of a certain route the fact of the path itself? Is the visible line what makes the route desirable? Would we think to scramble down a steep slope to the river’s edge if it wasn’t evident that someone else had been there before, that someone else had marked the way as desirable?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by
[Robert Frost]
Frost’s famous poem highlights the allure of less travelled paths. Is that what we’re following when we leave the sidewalk in favour of a desire line? Or are we in fact opting for a route that’s more visible travelled? Is the allure of a desire line in the fact that it has been travelled, and that we can see that fact? When we leave the sidewalk for a desire path, which road are we taking?
Scott Burnham experimented with desire lines in a way that allowed trails to be left on harder, concrete surfaces. He too is conscious of the importance of the visual nature of desire lines:
As the visitor walks across the space, his path leaves a trail in the grid of LED lights are embedded in the surface of the space. The next visitor to enter the space will see the trail left by the previous visitor, and other recent ones as the ghost of their travels are held by the LED lights in the pavement, each previous path fading slowly with time.
If you follow the links, you can read more about his project, but I thought I’d share this video, which is a neat illustration of his digital desire lines.
Thanks to Chalundrai and Stephen for asking leading questions, and please, everyone, keep on asking more!