ROAM: WALKING, MAPPING, AND PLAY AT PASEO TAOS 2016
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As part of Paseo Taos, an outdoor new media festival, students from Taos Cyber Magnet School were introduced to ROAM, an interactive mobile exploration game that helps players get lost and prompts them to creatively document their journey. We engaged in a wander/walk to create critical and creative investigations of walking, mapping, and play within the interactive urban landscape of PASEO Taos.

The workshop presented high school students to ROAM. Students were introduced to walking and mapping as a research methodology, art practice and curricular structure. We discussed the work of artists who use walking and mapping to observe, locate, notate, and respond to sites, mapping meaning across disciplines and media. Students explored the use of game structures to promote wandering as a form of artistic methodology and pedagogy, and to create opportunities for critical and creative engagements with both our built and natural environments. Students were introduced to the work of the Situationist International, contemporary walking artists, and participatory game structures in the context of ROAM. Students used ROAM to explore PASEO Taos, using the game to wander through the festival and capture their experience. Students’ photos and text were available for view in ROAM’s online gallery during Paseo Taos.