the map is not the territory

Another walking game, pulled from Guy Debord's "Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography":

Use a map to disorient oneself, use a map in a way that betrays its purpose, use a map in a way which  reveals its failure to accurately represent the infinitely complex contours of the territory...

To warp a map's representational aspect, as Debord explains, is an effective means to provoking a new and exciting experience of a common place. This shifts the locus of meaning from the object being interpreted to the interpreter. The map's deterministic quality vanishes-- space becomes Open. 

Debord shows that one can accomplish this effect simply by using a map of one place to navigate the territory of another place. This tactic relies on the interpretive leaps the walker makes while engaging with a set of vague directions. The culmination of this interpretative decision making constitutes a unique path, a trace of the walker's moment-to-moment decision-making. 

A walker expresses their particular way of being through their path. A walker simultaneously composes and performs a place through their path.  For instance, a short cut does not exist until someone takes it.

A musical analogy:

Here's a visual score for the ANS Synthesiser. Its by composer / audio engineer Stanislav Kreichi

The visual scores of John Cage, Anthony Braxton and others function similarly to these misused maps, shifting the locus of meaning from the object of interpretation to the interpreter. A visual score is made up of abstract lines, shapes and colors, rather than traditional musical notation: as such, interpretive decisions constitute the piece, rather than a pre-determined formula.

The visual score is less a map than a territory to be explored. It is a composition of sorts, but one to be composed through its performance-- through the interpretative decisions of the players. Similarly, Debord's map of London loses its map-character once transposed on a different place, and becomes a territory unto itself, containing an infinite variety of possible interpretations.  Neither the visual score nor the decontextualized map are actually representational, though both play at it. The impetus for interpretive decision-making springs from this tension. 

A visual score could be walked, a map could be played. To the walker, the lines of the score included above could suggest cadence, duration, or direction. To the musician, the map could represent shape, texture, drones or sharp blasts. Exploring these possibilities only requires an interpreter to connect the map to the territory.