Psychogeography (First Session with Leah)

When looking up the basic definition for Psychogeopraphy, I am met with the phrase
"Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting" around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International.". This experimentation with journeys and how they are interpreted is quite broad and opens a world of imagination. It allows you to express how you see the world visually, but also through other senses such as sound and feel. 

One artist that researched in depth, who uses these methods is Janet Cardiff. Her work is interesting as she combines the story of a journey visually and also through sound to tell a story. My particular favourite is 'Her Long Black Hair', where she combines photography, sound and viewer interactivity to tell the story of a lady with long black hair.

In terms of ideas for Leah's mini project she set of us creating our own psychogeography journey, I have considered many ideas however Janet Cardiff's methods have drawn me in. One idea could be to take old pictures of farnham, and hold them up in those places where they were taken now, and then take a picture so you can see the contrast. I could possibly form a soundscape to go with this.

Want to combine psychogeography with photography and text. I have an idea to plan out a route on a map of Farnham. Then I take this route, photographing what I can see at particular points. Then I will write down information, things I can see, sounds and smells into a note book. I will then transfer this text onto the photography digitally. This way not only will the viewer see the visual aspects of my journey, they would also know what I could hear and smell.

I started doing this while sitting near the harbour in Portsmouth. I took a picture of a point I found interesting, recorded the soundscape and then wrote down what I could see and hear in detail.

The text idea was inspired by the artist Bill Drummond, who connect travelling and psychogeography with text and colour.

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