Keep On Researching!

Even though we have formulated the basic idea of our project, I still want to look into maps & journeys, particularly installations, as it is interesting to look into and may help to develop our brain idea visually.

I particularly want to look into psychogeography , art & science and possibly memory and how they link to mapping and journeys. Also researching more into it may give me further inspiration for future projects.

I started by getting books out from the library. One includes Digital Art by Christiane Paul.

There were some interesting projects within this book, some that related greatly to the idea of maps & journeys. One of which was a project PDPal (2003) by Marina Zurkow, Scott Paterson and Julian Bleeker. This project is an ongoing series of for the Palm PDS, mobile phone and web. It is based around mapping and attempting to transform your everyday activities and urban experiences into a dynamic city that you write. It engages the user through a visual transformation, highlighting the technologies that locate are often static and without reference to the lively nature of urban environments.

"Your own city is the city composed of the places you live, play, work, and remember. Itís made of the routes and paths through which you make connections. Your city is also about the meanings you ascribe to the places you inhabit, pass through, love or hate. You imagine those places and routes as more than a street address, or directions you may give. These places have vivid, metaphorical meanings and histories that PDPal allows you to capture and visualize imaginatively, effectively writing your imaginary city.

In response to the plethora of mapping projects that have utilized GPS and measurable cartography, PDPal has been anti-geographic and anti-cartesian, preferring to experiment with the construction of relative, emotionally based systems that ask: what makes social or personal space. PDPal responds to the century-old idea of the urban explorer: from Baudelaire's "flaneur" (late 19th c); the Dadaists' public performances of nothing, sometimes called "deambulations" (1921); Benjamin's texts on the urban wanderer (1920's); the Situationists' algorithmic "derives"; Hakim Bey's "Temporary Autonomous Zones" that spring up in the cracks of urban regulations, and are opportunities for brief piracy of a place; and contemporary work in psychogeography - all deliberate projects of "getting lost" in the city, thus restoring it to a great dense space of wonder, not just a locus of labors."

This is a really interesting concept as it allowed anyone to contribute showing their emotion in relation to areas of cities. This was done by the audience achieving four questions every and the answers , together with postal codes of the participants. This created an emotional landscape which could be access through the internet. This was a good example of psychogeography (the study and effects of the geographical environment on individuals' emotions and behaviours, which was developed by Situationists in the 50's).

I might explore this idea of places and emotions. I know I have certain connection to places, especially where I live.  Having emotions for certain places can be shared with other people, and thats why I find this subject particularly interesting.