With smart phones, smart cities, and endless tools to maximize efficiency and minimize travel time, the possibility for serendipitous encounters or discoveries is diminishing. Artist and architect Mark Shepard created Serendipitor, an iPhone app that brings out the playful explorer in all of us. Users input their selected destination, and Serendipitor provides inventive directional routes and suggested actions inspired by Fluxus, Vito Acconci, Yoko Ono, among others, helping users find something surprising and new along their way. Users can increase or decrease the complexity of the route, depending on how much time they have. Serendipitor is part of Shepard’s larger project, the Sentient City Survival Kit (supported by Creative Capital), which “probes the social, cultural and political implications of ubiquitous computing for urban environments.”
- Projects
- 78th Street Play Street
- 596 Acres
- 1415
- Air Quality Egg
- AirCasting
- Amphibious Architecture
- Aquaponics Container System
- Art in Odd Places
- ARTfarm
- Astoria Scum River Bridge
- Bartering and Sharing Networks
- Bat Cloud
- Bench Press
- Better Block
- BK Farmyards
- Brooklyn Night Bazaar
- Bubbleware
- Building Projections
- Bunchy Carter Park for the People
- By the City/For the City
- Campito
- Cart Coop
- chainlinkGREEN
- Chair-bombing
- City Farm
- City Sensing: Signal Spaces
- Come Out & Play Festival
- Community Living Room
- Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism
- Cut.Join.Play.
- Day Labor Station
- Depave
- Dérive App
- Detroit, Demolition, Disneyland
- Eco-Playground
- Edible Estates
- Edible Schoolyard
- Edible Wall
- Faubourg St. Roch Project
- Field Guide to Phytoremediation
- For Squat / Reuben Kincaid Realty
- Fresh Moves Mobile Market
- Ghost Bikes
- GOOD Ideas for Cities
- Grassroots Mapping
- Greenaid Seedbomb Vending Machine
- Guerrilla Bike Lanes
- Guerrilla Drive-Ins
- Guerrilla Gardening
- Guerrilla Grafters
- Harvest Dome
- Hypothetical Development Organization
- I Wish This Was
- ICE-POPS
- Iluminacción
- Imagination Playground
- Insert____Here
- Intersection Repair
- Islands of LA
- Kingshighway Skatepark
- KISS Popup Chapel
- LA Green Grounds
- Legal Waiting Zone
- LentSpace
- LightLane
- Linden Living Alley
- Local Code: Real Estates
- Local Previews
- Making Policy Public
- Marcus Prize Pavilion
- Mobile Dumpster Pools
- Museum of the Phantom City
- MyBlockNYC
- Neighborland
- New Public Sites
- NY Street Advertising Takeover
- No Longer Empty
- Occupy Wall Street
- OpenPlans
- Paintings for Satellites
- Parking Plot
- Parklets
- Parkman Triangle Park
- Parkmobiles
- Participation Park
- People Make Parks
- Periscope Project
- Phone Booth Book Share
- PHS Pops-Up Garden
- Pixelator
- Place It!
- Place Pulse
- Pop Up City
- Pop Up Lunch
- Pop-Up Art Loop
- Popularise: Build Your City
- popuphood
- Post Furniture
- Power Cart
- Power House
- proxy
- QR_Hobo_Codes
- Queens Boulevard Intervention
- re:NEWS
- Red Swing Project
- San Francisco Garden Registry
- SeeClickFix
- Serendipitor
- Skipping Only Zones
- Soil Kitchen
- Spatial ConTXTs
- Stairway Stories
- Streetfilms
- Syracuse Downtown
- Tactical Urbanism Handbook
- Ten New Historical Markers
- TreeKIT
- Trees, Cabs and Crime in San Francisco
- The Uni
- Version Festival 12
- Walk Raleigh: Guerrilla Wayfinding
- War Gastronomy: Recipes of Relocation
- #whOWNSpace
- Yarnbombing
- Teams
Mark Shepard
Serendipitor
Online
2010 to present
Accessibility, Community, Information, Pleasure
10,000
14 days
4
Problem - cities and tools too smart for serendipitous encounters
Solution - smart phone navigation app that helps you find something by looking for something else




