What happens when a map stops being a fixed object and instead becomes something alive; something that shifts, responds, and unfolds through participation?
This question has been at the centre of my recent exploration into walking art, where I’ve been developing an unfolding map: a physical-digital hybrid that allows the “outside” world to be folded inward through the actions of those who engage with it.
At its simplest, the map exists as a tactile, foldable object. It is something you can hold, open, refold, and navigate in a traditional sense. But embedded within it are QR codes, each acting as a portal rather than a destination. Instead of pointing to a place, they invite the participant to contribute to it.
The phrase “folding the outside in” has become a useful way of thinking about this process. Walking is no longer just movement through space; it becomes a method of gathering, translating, and re-inscribing experience. Each participant leaves a trace, and those traces accumulate, creating a map that is less about geography and more about encounter.
What interests me most is how this shifts authorship. The map begins as my framework, but it doesn’t remain mine for long. It becomes distributed, contingent, and collaborative. The authority of the map dissolves into a network of small contributions; moments of noticing, fragments of thought, fleeting impressions.
There’s also something important about the act of unfolding itself. Physically opening the map mirrors the conceptual process at play: layers are revealed, connections emerge, and the boundary between inside and outside becomes less stable. The QR codes act as hinges between these layers, allowing movement not just across space, but between physical and digital, individual and collective.
In a way, this project resists the idea of a finished artwork. The map is never complete because the walk is never complete. It continues to gather, to shift, to fold and unfold with each new interaction.
I am in the midst of completing an action research cycle exploring how sharing my work is a part of the process of shaping my artist identity. Each exhibition is an assemblage, a folding in of the outside.
As with if encounter the map, you’re not just reading it, you’re helping to write it; if the audience encounters my work they co-create meaning but also my artist identity. I do not share what I am; I become what I share.