Psychogeography

[regohemia]

So I probably ought to explain what this psychogeography thing is, since I've rambled about it before.

There's really like three parts to psychogeography, in my perspective: its history within theoretical context, its purpose as it was created, and what it's being used for now. I'll start with the beginning.

In the 60's in France there was a guy

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Supplemental

[regohemia]

'What is Psychogeography

[green_left_eye]

All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops - the geometry.

I read this and it brings this to mind.

[regohemia]

Wow.
Really?
I mean... really?
Did you just Time Cube my LJ?

Fuck man, that's like having Rick Astley show up to your house to Rick Roll you.

-Me

[green_left_eye]

Technology is dangerous in the hands of apes. If you think that Rick Rolling is bad, just wait until we have virtual reality and downloadable experiences.

Some friend will send you an attachment that promises a picture of a kitten or a recipe for delicious corn bread, but when you open it you get raped by German Shepards while The Final Countdown plays in the background. Goatse has nothing on that shit.

Seriously, though, that quote has a very Time Cube feel to it.

[nyuanshin]

Wouldn't be *too* hard to write virus-checker-like software for that kind of thing.

[ineffabelle]

"So... that said... for me... a psychogeographic tour guide is a book or person who digs as deep as they can into the history, character, personalities, myths, stories, and skeleton filled closets of a place, tries to interpret the details as best they can to find the "story" of the place, and then brings all of those details from the past and from previous fictions (since lots of places have been used in fiction already) into the *present* geography... thereby constructing a new "map" of the place... hopefully a map other people can use to not only see the city with different eyes, but if friends of the psychogeographer, to get to know them better as well, since with a psychogeographic map, the map of the outside really is a map of the inside of the mapper."

I used to do that stuff with Ridgely in Manhattan a lot. And my friend Wade too.

[regohemia]

I sort of got that impression from you at one point in time.
Do you not anymore? New things to think about?

-Me

[ineffabelle]

Well, no one to walk around and observe things with...

[suburban_gypsy]

Are you familiar with Foucault?

[regohemia]

I laughed so hard I almost peed myself with your first comment.

To your second comment... yes, somewhat, passingly, thought more intensely with every read of a postmodernist anything.

I ask why you ask because I know lots of people with lots of reads of Foucault.

-Me

[suburban_gypsy]

Ha. Yes. That would have been good, wouldn't it? It was early and it was just a flub, and instead of deciding to address it in a new comment I just deleted it and started over. It wasn't until just now I realized the simple humor of, "Are you Foucault?"

[suburban_gypsy]

And to answer your question in response to my second comment, I'm not too familiar with Foucault myself. A bunch of my friends just took a women's studies class where they read Discipline and Punish. Your post reminded me of their secondhand explanations of his take on the Panopticon. If all I ever end up getting in life is secondhand Foucault, I'll probably be okay with that.

[nyuanshin]

". . . the map of the outside really is a map of the inside of the mapper."

Nice. Welcome back (I think). This brought to mind Conrad Roth, who does a lot of this stuff around England, though without the Continental influence.

[regohemia]

Thanks for the welcome back. I'm not sure what I'm doing here, but apparently I still have some somethings to do.

-Me