Psychogeography Research

PsychoGeography: “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”

PsychoGeography is…

• diverse activities that raise awareness of the natural and cultural environment around you
• attentive to senses and emotions as they relate to place and environment
• serious fun
• often political and critical of the status quo

Derive: aimless, random drifting through a place, guided by whim and an awareness of how different spaces draw you in or repel you.

Dérive: “A mode of experimental behavior linked to the condition of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances.”  Situationists used “ambiance” to refer to the feeling or mood associated with a place, to its character, tone, or to the effect or appeal it might have; but they also used it to refer to the place itself, especially to the small, neighborhood-sized chunks of the city they called unités d’ambiance or unities of ambiance, parts of the city with an especially powerful urban atmosphere.  Wood “Lynch Debord.“

Guy Debord, Guide Pychogéographique de Paris

“The unities of ambiance appeared on the map as fragments of commercial street maps carefully cut out to indicate each unity’s defenses and exits.  The psychogeographic slopes were symbolized by red arrows indicating the forces the city exerted on drifters freed from other motivations for moving: drifters would be pulled in the direction of the arrows from one unity of ambiance to another.  The weight, shape, and patterning of the arrows indicated the lengths and strengths of the psychogeographic slopes.” Wood “Lynch Debord.“

Deep Thoughts on Psychogeography…

“Unfold a street map… place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out in the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour.” Robert MacFarlane, Psychogeography: A Beginner’s Guide.

“The production of psychogeographic maps, or even the introduction of alterations such as more or less arbitrarily transposing maps of two different regions, can contribute to … complete insubordination of habitual influences. A friend recently told me that he had just wandered through the Harz region of Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London.” Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.

“To derive was to notice the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind, inclinations, and desires, and to seek out reasons for movement other than those for which an environment was designed.” Sadie Plant, The Most Radical Gesture.

“The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the appealing or repelling character of certain places–all this seems to be neglected.” Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.

“One or more persons committed to the derive abandon, for an undefined period of time, the motives generally admitted for action and movement, their relations, their labor and leisure activities, abandoning themselves to the attractions of the terrain and the encounters proper to it.” McDonough, “Situationist Space.”

“There’s a difference between knowing the Path and walking the Path.” The Matrix.

We are so tuned out, focused on getting through places for practical reasons (get to school, to work, etc.) that we don’t pay attention to places and the way all our senses and emotional awareness can be used to know these places.

What places attract us? Which repel us? Why?

In 1955, he defined it as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals ". [An introduction to a critique of urban geography, 1955]. This has been echoed much later by Michel de Certeau in his characterisation of patterns established in ostensibly unpurposeful walking in the city: "a symbolic order of the unconscious". [The practice of everyday life, 1988].