Psychogeography
Topic: Walking through the world
Utne magazine has an interesting article on a new way of walking called Psychogeography. Basically it's a way of jogging you out of your set paths through town. You use an algorithm such as 1 block left, 2 blocks right, 1 block right.

"Still others practiced "generative psychogeography," or algorithmic walking, pioneered (as far as I can tell) by a Dutch artists' collective called social fiction. Participants walk an algorithm or fixed pattern, such as "first right, second left, first left, repeat." In other words, you head in any direction, take the first right, then go two blocks to the second left, then at one block take a left, and then repeat the pattern as often as you wish. The result is a remarkable style of travel -- neither goal-oriented nor random, structured but always surprising.

I asked Christina Ray, one of the conference organizers, what common thread holds these urban adventures together: Just what is psychogeography, in a nutshell? "Break it down into its two parts," she says. "It's the psychological and the geographical. It's about how we're affected by being in certain places -- architecture, weather, who you're with -- it's just a general sense of excitement about a place."

Most of us, she explains, just follow a small set of preprogrammed instructions as we wander through the city: office, day care, grocery store, home. And she's right. If you track your own path through a typical day, you'll soon discover that your journey is habitual, that you're slowly wearing a canyon through the same streets, the same sidewalks, day after day.

Psychogeography encourages us to buck the rut, to follow some new logic that lets us experience our landscape anew, that forces us to truly see what we'd otherwise ignore. "Chance and randomness," says Ray, "are what's exciting." (The Web site of Ray's art group, Glowlab -- www.glowlab.blogs.com -- is a great source of information on psychogeographic happenings.)"

This intruiged me because one reason I like volkswalks and geocaching is that it takes me to places I wouldn't normally go and phychogeography not only would accomplish the same thing but it can be done at anytime for however much time I have available. Sort of an instant off the beaten path type of thing. I'll have to try this.