Phsycogeography Visual Research

Images :

From web sources 

Mapping Weird Stuff

http://mappingweirdstuff.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/mapping-weird-stuff-psychogeography/

The use of images here helps to visualise the real life situations.

The simple layout + heavy image and text portrays a lot of real life things that have happened. 

It is simple but very effective - i could maybe do this for all of the map or just sections to compare the consumer map to phsycogeography map. 

http://johnledger.wordpress.com/tag/psychogeography/

http://johnledger.wordpress.com/tag/psychogeography/

These maps don't contain a great visual aspect of design but they highlight specific things that make them seem like they portray real life in a real life way. The designs focus on images and short hand notes to describe a certain location. This will differ to my actual map of consumerism and i am looking forward to create a map based upon this style to represent a real life situation at each ensue point on the map of Leeds hyde park toLeeds city centre. 

Lecture 5 : Resolving your Research Project

Physcogeography

From the presentation - the idea to look into phycogeogrpahy was highlighted. This was to ensure thatI could start to relate my consumerism on a public notice as visual pollution and put what could be highlighted such as real life (physcogeogrpahy) 

Initial Research: 

Psychogeography : http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk

Psychogeography and the dériveThe following text is taken from 'The most radical gesture: The Situationist International in a postmodern age' by Sadie Plant and published by Routledge. Read it, and live without dead time.

...The situationists' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we live which is ignored.

"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."  Guy Debord, ' Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography

Concealed by the functional drudgery of city life, such areas of psychogeographical research were seen as the ground of a new realm of experiment with the possibilities of everyday experience.One of psychogeography's principle means was the dérive. Long a favorite practice of the dadaists, who organized a variety of expeditions, and the surrealists, for whom the geographical form of automatism was an instructive pleasure, the dérive, or drift, was defined by the situationists as the 'technique of locomotion without a goal', in which 'one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The dérive acted as something of a model for the 'playful creation' of all human relationships.

Unlike surrealist automatism, the dérive was not a matter of surrendering to the dictates of an unconscious mind or irrational force. Indeed, the situationists' criticisms of surrealism concluded that 'the unconscious imagination is poor, that automatic writing is monotonous, that the whole genre of ostentatious surrealist "weirdness" has ceased to be very surprising'. Nor was everything subordinated to the sovereignty of choice: to dérive 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. It was very much a matter of using an environment for one's own ends, seeking not only the marvelous beloved by surrealism but bringing an inverted perspective to bear on the entirety of the spectacular world. Potlatch carried a lovely example of this inversion of priorities in the form of a letter addressed to The Times protesting against the redevelopment of London's Chinese quarter. After a defense of the area itself, the letter ends:"Anyway, it is inconvenient that this Chinese quarter of London should be destroyed before we have the opportunity to visit it and carry out certain psychogeographical experiments we are at present undertaking... if modernization appears to you, as it does to us, to be historically necessary, we would counsel you to carry your enthusiasm into areas more urgently in need of it, that is to say, your political and moral institutions."

...the situationists developed an armoury of confusing weapons intended constantly to provoke critical notice of the totality of lived experience and reverse the stultifying passivity of the spectacle. 'Life can never be too disorientating,' wrote Debord and Wolman, in support of which they described a friend's experience wandering 'through the Harz region of Germany while blindly following the directions of a map of London.'Such disorientation was not craved for its own sake. But as a means of showing the concealed potential of experimentation, pleasure, and play in everyday life, the situationists considered a little chaos to be a valuable means to exposing the way in which the experiences made possible by capitalist production could be appropriated within a new enabling system of social relations.

From: Drifting with The Situationist International, Author Unknown, from Smile #5

An example of a situation-creating technique is the dérive. The dérive is the first step toward an urban praxis. It is a stroll through the city by several people who are out to understand the "psychogeographical articulation of the modern city". The strollers attempt an interpretive reading of the city, an architectural understanding. They look at the city as a special instance of repressed desires. At the same time, they engage in "playful reconstructive behavior". Together they turn the city around. They see in the city unifying and empowering possibilities in place of the present fragmentation and pacification. This "turning around" or détournment is a key strategic concept of the Situationists. Détournment is a dialectical tool. It is an "insurrectional style" by which a past form is used to show its own inherent untruth-- an untruth masked by ideology. It can be applied to billboards, to written texts, to films, to cartoons, etc., as well as to city spaces. Marx used it when he "turned Hegel on his head." He used the dialectic in the study of history to expose the ideological nature of Hegel's idealism. The Situationists use détournment to demonstrate the scandalous poverty of everyday life despite the plenty of commodities. They attempted to demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be. They wanted to rupture the spell of the ideology of our commodified consumer society so that our repressed desires of a more authentic nature could come forward. The situation is based on liberated desires rather than alienated ones. What these desires are cannot be stated a priori. They will emerge in the revolutionary process of situation-creation, of détournment. Presumably, communality, unification, and public urban space will emerge as more desirable than commodification, fragmentation, and privatization.

Methodologies & Critical Analysis - Richard Miles Lecture

Methodologies 

+ Critical Analysis 
Clear evidence of methodology in written element of CoP3

Methods : HOW the information you have found is 
sourced / collected / collated / presented 

Research & level 6 critically

Methodology - clearly thinking where to get research from, methods of gathering, sleeting evidence, and selecting those appropriate for your study. 

+ a systemic way of sifting through information to get to the point
Quanntative : Approaching the subject from this to get answers.


Methodology is distant from theory. Theory can help you decided a method/s or the material you find may suggest approaporate theories. 
What theory relates + nessacery - which will I prefer or reject or fuse?


Communication Theory - communication with designer and client etc. (RELATABLE)
Social History / Marxist 

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Action Research - Experiment and creation of work - act of making is a process of investigation 
Critical Evaluate - How would you document, reflect, change in a constant cycle. 
though studio notebooks or blogs. Process of practice based research needs some sort of theoretical lens. 

Write an attempt of a Methodology that incorporates a theoretical and justification for theoretical approach. 

1. Make decisions about how to collect and organise and order information

2. Chose relevant theortical stand point

3. Apply these to your study

4. Explicitly outline this in the INTRODUCTION. Address suggested failings in the CONCLUSION. 

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CRITICAL ANALYSIS


Critical : meaning to 'separate' or 'to choose'
A processes of Skepticism : Almost disprove hypothesis 

and Reasoned Thinking  - 'Stepping away' and using evidence and logic to come to your conclusions. 

Opinion needs to be arrived at through an informed body of research and a critical take on that research derived from evidence and logic. 

An awareness of perspectives. 
where was the author / artist/ designer / photographer situated ? - Realise 'flaws' 

'Context is everything'

Consider the influence of one or more of the following;
-time
-place
-society
-politics
-economics
-technology
-philosophy
-scientific thought

Why was the designer making something - how does it relate to one of the above. 

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Evidence

What IS the evidence for what you are saying. Back everything up - needs to be supported.
MARKING A RESEARCH PROJECT - where your opinions is backed up by rigerious methodologies.
Could you find more evidence to support your conclusions  

EVIDENCE:

- REASON ANALYSIS OF EVIDENCE
- LOGIC IHNTERPROATON OF EVIDENCE
- A COHERENT ARGUMENT 
which becomes a

Logical Argument 

Triangulation