ORLANDO

Mazes are naturally occurring phenomena; traps for the eye and mind.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

This simple one-line code generates random zeroes and ones. These are assigned to two characters (\ or /) which are output to the screen. Their accumulation creates a maze.

This program will only run on a particular version of BASIC on a particular machine that was manufactured between 1982 and 1994. The design of these two characters, and their placement beside each other in the local dialect of ASCII character codes, came together to allow this to happen. The grit in the oyster, that is this quirk in the design, makes these mazes occur.

Video feedback creates mazes. If you turn a video camera to face a monitor, which is displaying the output of the camera, and find the correct angle to orientate the one to the other, endless maze patterns will appear on the screen. This will work with analogue equipment or digital equipment, it isn’t a matter of programming but a naturally occurring phenomenon on the edge of feedback.

Humans and ants create mazes and live inside them. Older cities like London develop organically over centuries. Even when later town planners and architects attempt to impose the grid of their preoccupations onto the city, they are influenced by the unseen hands of architectural fashion, economic and political contingency and countless other preoccupations as arbitrary as the placement and design of character codes 205 and 206.