Utility Notation is a guided psychogeographic walk led by artist Ruby Waldo that explores the overlooked utility codes spray-painted on sidewalks in Pittsburgh’s Point Breeze neighborhood. Participants learn to recognize the colors and symbols used to mark underground infrastructure such as electric cables, gas lines, water mains, and sewage pipes—visual language that maps hidden networks beneath the urban surface. Using these utility markings as a navigational score, the walk encourages an embodied experience of the city as participants follow cues for movement and observation along a 1.25-mile route.
The event combines artistic practice with an attentive study of everyday urban surroundings, inviting walkers to use their bodies and senses to engage with infrastructure in a new way. Through this process, Utility Notation highlights the relationship between the built environment and the flow of resources, revealing how subterranean systems shape the rhythms of the city above. The walk starts at Westinghouse Park and includes a visual score for reference, fostering deeper awareness of both the physical landscape and one’s own movement within it.
