A graduate from Central Saint Martins in London has designed an excessively long pair of shoes that look like they should belong to a very thin clown, but in fact are made to force the wearer to reconsider their daily routes and pace.
Paulina Lenoir describes with an apparently straight face on her website how the "excessively long slow shoes" were inspired by society's obsession with efficiency. "Efficiency has taken over most of the daily interactions, architecture and objects in an urban context. As a consequence, we have lost control over determining our individual pace and interpretation of time; the diversity in our rhythmic patterns has become diffused," she writes.
The wearer of the longer shoes, she goes on, must "consciously impose" a slower pace on their movements than they would usually, and therefore change the dynamics of their journey. "Their shape, weight, and length exaggerates and slows down daily movements making them less familiar thus creating a contrasting pace."
A video of a man wearing the shoes shows how difficult it is to walk in them -- he is in his own slower lane and cannot conform to the pace of the busy, purposeful walkers around him. His purpose seems only not to trip over his own feet. "Through imposing a rhythm on oneself with an object of the everyday one can transcend the ordered structure created by the urban environment by becoming aware of how we are succumbing to externally imposed rhythms," explains Lenoir.
The shoes make walking up the stairs look like an absurd exercise and further comedy is added to the situation by the smart design of them, and the equally smart man wearing them. The formality of the man's attire only makes the whole situation seem more ridiculous -- but Lenoir is also playing on the stereotype of the male businessman, the city commuter.
It might be an amusing exercise, but the analogue nature of the mindfulness that the shoes prompt contrasts starkly with many of the digital methods that are popular for encouraging a more mindful commute.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
