internet walking tours
Internet Walking Tours is an ongoing series of walking tours, currently based in London.
“When trying to find Internet infrastructure in a city, it’s helpful to start from the ground up – or, more precisely, somewhere just below the ground up…” - Ingrid Burrington, artist (2016)
Building off of the work of artists like Ingrid Burrington and Mario Santamaría, I’m keen to bring our digital infrastructures beyond the comfort of slide decks and auditorium-style presentations to something more experimental, something that shifts how ideas can be communicated through performance, movement, and spontaneous exchange.
The first internet walking tour took place at the Open House festival. Please sign up for my newsletter if you’re interested in joining other internet tours!
During the first internet walking tour, we traced the routes of fibre-optic cables beneath our feet, decoded the markings on ubiquitous manholes covering British Telecom tunnels, and explored the emergence of 5G masts, public Wi-Fi networks, and even a functioning internet exchange point.
I’m interested in expanding this work into a broader series of “digital heritage” tours – mapping how London’s landscape has evolved alongside communication technologies. Could we walk through the former sites of the General Post Office, or trace the transformation of BT from a public utility to a global telecoms giant? These are the stories of connection, communication, and control that define the modern city.
