Monster for imagination, Code for environmental encoding.

With the advent of writing, skills for structuring our thoughts in the landscape have atrophied. A library of books is wonderful, but lacks some of the key features that have shaped human thought over thousands of years. Some of the most fun, easily shared mental structures are those embedded in landscape features: in essence, a walk.

Ironically, there is very little writing on these practices, which have faded so thoroughly from Western memory that no verbs exist, despite their presence in cultures and societies around the world. Examples that may be mentioned in relation this context range from Native American pilgrimage trails to Inca ceque systems, the ceremonial roads of the Pacific Islands, Australia’s Aboriginal songlines, and the neolithic causeways and henges of Northwestern Europe.

An alphabet of letters can represent anything from a song to a parking fine, a constitution or a treatise on geology. In much the same way, embedding ‘data’ in your local environment, is based on simple steps, but their combined impact can be profound. The great benefit of this practice is not just in improving your memory. The bigger impact is to collapse all kinds of knowledge, currently spread out across books, songs, news articles, recipes, and equations, into a single space. After a few weeks of practice, you’ll wonder how you lived with an unstructured mind. Having different kinds of knowledge coexisting in a single physical space gears your mind to discern patterns.

Some of the main structures that can be applied in the field.

Step 1: Arrange your data

Physical mind-spaces can hold huge amounts of information, if well-structured. Choose a structure that fits your ‘data-set’: if you want to structure your knowledge seasonally, use a circle; if you are working with a timeline, choose a line; if encoding insect species, choose a branching structure (a street for wasps, a street for grasshoppers).

Step 2: How to embed something

This photo shows the starting point of my first timeline, in a local shopping street. In Franksay’s beauty salon on the right, George Washington is washing his hair, his presidency comes just before the turn of the century, so the other presidents are in the street around the corner, starting with the beer garden cafe. The cafe was being renovated when I first placed my timeline, so I decided it had been destroyed by a tidal wave of beer after ‘a dam’ burst, marking Adams, the second US president. Around the corner (out of view here), the next shop is a tiny snack bar, where Jefferson – or Chefferson – is doing the cooking.

The list of US presidents makes a nice, evenly spaced structure. Once you’ve placed the presidents in a walk through the park, or shopping street, or even an aisle in the supermarket, you have a timeline spanning a few centuries to play with, adding further events from world history. An easy starting point might be key political issues during each presidential term. The more you add, the richer this world (that no-one else can see) becomes.

Step 3: How to start

Choose a space you often visit, and try placing the first five items of your data set. Look for hooks when you walk; any feature that could link to the subject, signs, colours, strange shapes, words, etc. You want to create weird little scenes, and the more fun or outrageous, the better. If nothing interesting is happening at that location, invent a monster. Put the monster in MonsterCode. For example, I added a giant goldfish hovering above an unremarkable building, my timeline location for Job Baster, an early Dutch naturalist who brought the first goldfish to the Netherlands.

Step 4: How to continue

Repeat the walk a few times, placing additional data. First within days, to let it settle, then in a few weeks, then a few months. If locations change, tweak your narrative to fit the new situation.

Encoding European elephants in plant borders.

Practice data sets

Instead of US presidents, you might prefer:

Ten female pirates:

• Ching Shih (鄭一嫂) born in Guangdong, operated in South China Sea during the 18^th century (commanded the Guangdong Pirate Confederation and her infamous Fleet of the Red Flag)
• Anne Cormac (Anne Bonny) born in Ireland, operated in the Caribbean during the 17^th century (close friend of Mary Read)
• Mary Read, born in England, operated in the Caribbean during the 17^th century (also ran a bar in the Netherlands)
• Jeanne de Clisson (The Breton Tigress) born in France, married in Brittany, operated in the Bay of Biscay and English Channel during the 14^th century
• Sayyida al-Hurra (للا عائشة بنت علي بن رشيد العلمي ) born in Granada or Morocco, Governor of Tétouan and corsair, operating in the Mediterranean during the 16^th century
• Rachel Wall, born in Pennsylvania, operated in the Caribbean during the 18^th century
• Jacquotte Delahaye, born in Haiti (in fact or legend…), operated in the Caribbean during the 17^th century
• Gráinne Mhaol (The Pirate Queen) born in Ireland, fought in the “Nine Years’ War” against the English during the 16^th century
• Teuta of the Ardiaei, born in Illyria, operated in the Adriatic Sea, fought against the Roman Republic circa 220 BCE
• Sadie Farrell (Sadie the Goat) kidnapper and river pirate of the New York City waterfront during the 19^th century

This could be a timeline, or structured geographically, or otherwise?

A recipe for Poffertjes:

Ingredients: Poffertjes are a type of small Dutch pancakes.

• 2 cups self-rising flour
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 cup milk at room temperature
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup

Method:

• Combine flour and salt in a large bowl; gradually whisk in milk
• Add eggs and maple syrup, and mix until the batter is smooth
• Spoon into a piping bag
• Heat a poffertjes pan over a high heat
• Lightly butter the indentations
• Fill the holes ¾ full with batter from the piping bag
• Cook over high heat until golden brown
• Turn the poffertjes with a fork, and cook the other side until golden brown
• Serve with some powdered sugar

A recipe is interesting to practice embedding because it combines three different types of information: ingredients, quantities, and cooking sequence.

Jota soup encoded during PIFcamp in Slovenia 2022

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