Psychogeography

I found the reading about psychogeography on Wikipedia to be difficult to understand.  I agree with the issues listed at the top of the article about it being too technical and lacking a single coherent topic.  After reading the article, I also read the article “A New Way of Walking” by Joseph Hart from the July/August 2004 issue of Utne Reader and viewed some blogs with photos of what may have been encountered using a psychogeographic way of exploring the world. Viewing some other pages relating to this topic helped my understanding of just what psychogeography is.

My understanding is that psychogeography is exploring the environment especially in the city in a way in which you are not certain what you may find. It is not wandering aimlessly, but following an algorithm like take the first right, then the second left, then the first left and repeat this pattern as many times as wanted. The idea is that since you don’t know what you will find, whatever you find will be more interesting.  It is meant to be both playful and a way of observing one’s reaction to whatever one finds. It makes one more aware of the environment in which one is in. This type of a walk or travel is quite different from what we normally do which is going to the same places over and over. This purposeful  method of travel gets us from place to place, but we tend to ignore what we are passing because it is the same every time (with perhaps only slow or minor changes). My normal travels through Toledo consist of going to work, to the museum for class, going back home, to the grocery store and to my parents’ apartment. I travel the same routes over and over and can drive them even if my mind is on something else completely.

Traveling according to a pattern such as the one above that was suggested in Joseph Hart’s article makes one aware of everything everywhere that one goes because one does not know what will be encountered on this journey. This type of travel has no function other than to see what is encountered and how one reacts to it as one travels.

This type of travel relates to the project we are working on in class. After visiting one page of our projects visitors will have choices in which they do not know what they will encounter next. The projects may contain a surprise and people can also observe their reactions to these pages. Traveling from page to page any number of things may be found. This project is about exploring what is there and seeing how one reacts to it more than about trying to convey a specific message. There are many artists’ works that are about expressing something that the artist or patron feels. Some of the more modern forms of art such as performance art are more about seeing what happens and observing the result.