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Introduction to the Psychogeography Project
Introduction to the Psychogeography Project
Table of contents on this page
Table of contents on this page
Links
Links
Psychogeography
Détournement
Key terms
Key terms
Derive or Drift
Derive or Drift
In a dérive 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… But the dérive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities.
Knabb, Ken, ed. (1995). Situationist International Anthology. Berkley: Bureau of Public Secrets.
Détournement
Détournement
In general it can be defined as a variation on previous work, in which the newly created work has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhat familiar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message. The artist or commentator making the variation can reuse only some of the characteristic elements of the originating work.
Détournement is similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original works rather than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted with recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream media.
One could view détournement as forming the opposite side of the coin to 'recuperation' (where radical ideas and images become safe and commodified), in that images produced by the spectacle get altered and subverted so that rather than supporting the status quo, their meaning becomes changed in order to put across a more radical or oppositional message.
Research
Research
1 Research
1 Research
1. 1 Architecture as plan.
The Grid of New York City.
The 1980s paintings of Peter Halley.
Piet Mondrian – Broadway Boogie Woogie this offers a move from the first glance embrace of systems and rules – the ‘logos’ of modern art forms towards the movement and pleasure of the body.
1. 1 Architecture as plan.
1. 1 Architecture as plan.
The Grid of New York City.
Piet Mondrian – Broadway Boogie Woogie this offers a move from the first glance embrace of systems and rules – the ‘logos’ of modern art forms towards the movement and pleasure of the body.
The 1980s paintings of Peter Halley.
The Surrealists
The Surrealists
André Breton – the writer and theorist behind much of surrealism.
The surrealist map of the world.
Based on myth and storytelling. Ireland is large in England doesn't exist at all.
The automatic writing of Philip Masson. This is reworked by – the American woman artist who lived and worked in London from 1980s to 2000.
The Unconscious – free from the rule of the locus of male logic – the written word cast beyond coherent letters agreed by men to subjugate women.
Example of logos controlling life. Think of the runes which cover the staff in the Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner.
These runes are the records of the transactions which Wotan has made to achieve power and which you must break his hold on to it.
At this point, Wagner was a revolutionary communist who believe that capitalism is a system dominated and subjugated free will of humankind.
1. 3 The Situationists.
1. 3 The Situationists.
The thinker and writer Guy Debord theorises the epic display and alienation of capitalism in this book "the Society of the spectacle".
The Situationists engendered new approaches to our should be seen as social engagement in the manner of the programmatic relationship of the constructivist in Russia and the Surrealists in France.
Both of these art movements engaged with the revolutionary goals of the communist parties in Russia and France.
Psychogeography – make a map based on design not logic
Derive Ford/Detournement
"underneath the pavement, the beach"
1. 4 Mai 68
1. 4 Mai 68
The students of the left bank universities in Paris initiate a "sit in" demonstration and occupation star protests in the universities.
This then in turn escalates to wider social and western France and across Paris where there are marches and rights when the workers are called upon to join the students.
Ultimately, this does not be trepidation but is suppressed by the police on the orders of the French president Charles de Gaulle.
1. 5 The Post-Modern theorist John François Lyotard.
1. 5 The Post-Modern theorist John François Lyotard.
Many of the critical and theoretical writers who rose to renown in the 1980s were shaped in their thinking in the 1970s by the failure of the Mai 68 revolution.
This apparent failure of the revolution resulted in many critical and academic thinkers retreating into a kind of negativity and depression amongst the theoretical and academic networks of Europe.
It could also be said that it produce much of the terrorist activity of the early 1970s. For example, it could be argued that groups like the Baader-Meinhof terrorist cell in Germany and the Brigado Rossi and Red Army Faction in Italy are the products of much of this negativity, or releases physical manifestation.
Joel François Leotard wrote about "the libidinous economy ".
This is the theorising of an idea of the flow of energy driven through desire and which passes around the networks and organs of the body, much in the way their electricity flows around circuitry.
1. 6 Sigmund Freud.
1. 6 Sigmund Freud.
Sigmund Freud was important founder of psychoanalysis. Just as many academics and critical thinkers of the 1970s was scored in the history and forms of Marxist thinking, so too were many of them also used the ideas of Freud to develop and engineer ways of rethinking theoretical positions as responses to the perceived failures of direct and terrorist activity.
In this way thinkers could theorise alternatives to the revolutionary tactics of Mai 68 and the terrorism of the Red Army Faction.
– The establishment of a new identity or code of practice aimed at promoting a better set of constructions and conditions for society
– The replacement of logic as the sole and highest form of decision taking with desire/the accordance of desire is an important form of the condition taking
2 The practical application of this is a series of activities for the sketchbook
2 The practical application of this is a series of activities for the sketchbook
Turn this art history into practical art work...
2. 1 The use of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Ledoux, the French 18th-century architects
2. 1 The use of Étienne-Louis Boullée and Ledoux, the French 18th-century architects
Use collage and speckling and stippling techniques with a sponge and ink to recreate buildings like –, and – in your sketchbook.
Add lines which into move behind and in front of these buildings.
Projects plan views of these buildings onto the sketchbook and draw needs and rectangular players onto your sketchbook so that you have detailed and accurate drawings. Makes decisions about where to include and omit details. Use these drawings to add blue and red line drawings of the movement of possible routes between, behind and in front of the buildings.
2. 2 Add drawings to your sketchbook of
2. 2 Add drawings to your sketchbook of
– Leonardo da Vinci's "The Apprentice"
– Damien Hirst's sculpture "mother"
– A medical diagram of a heart
Make these large-scale as line drawings in brown and black ink and allow them to overlay and overlap.
At blue and red curved and free flowing lines drawn in crayon to these images. In medical diagrams, oxygenated blood flows from the heart as red lines. By contrast, depleted and non-oxygenated blood returns to the heart as blue lines. Annotate your drawings with these lines and explain this point.
Add two more colours (green and yellow would be good examples) suggest that these represent Lib Eden this desire and its flow around the body. Draw some flowing yellow and green lines around each element, and in each figure.
At some annotation: making a conference with the lines moving between the buildings in the previous drawings. Describe the equipment you are making between the logic of a diagram showing the flow of blood, the logic of a plan showing the flow of people on traffic, and the logic of a diagram which shows attentional map based on desire.
2. 3 Le Courbusier and the city – the hermit's retreat
2. 3 Le Courbusier and the city – the hermit's retreat
Activity:
Activity:
Source some line drawings of look abuses plans for cities, repeat the layering and colouring of imaginary drawings and journeys around these buildings using the examples in the previous activity.
You could impose your own you colour scheme on this or repeat the colours used in previous activity.
Source a map of Paris, print this and stick it in your sketchbook across a double page spread.
Take photos of yourself in walking poses seen from different angles – above, to one side, behind and the detail of one leg, your feet, your hands etc.
Use these as projections to make drawings in coloured ink over the map of Paris. Use 2 to 3 colours of your own choosing.
Add acetate images of line drawings of famous prison buildings – the Arc de Triomphe, the I thought our, the property centre, Notre Dame Cathedral et cetera.
Add lines of the same colour for the desire that you used in the previous pages. Add these lines to run smoothly over parts of the overlapping images and wide-ranging made of yourself and the acetate drawings of the famous buildings.
You can then use a ruler to shade of parts of the city which are made by these new contours stop
Write a short paragraph describing the process and show how you are creating arbitrary new additions to the map zones of interest to the play of chance and arbitrary decision taking.
Think of synonyms (in other words that mean the same) for the word "arbitrary". use a thesaurus or google to help you find similar meaning words. write these down as a vertical list to one side of your drawings.
2. 3 Tracing
2. 3 Tracing
On the next page is a word processor and a projector to make traced drawings of overlapping letters. If you do not have access to a projector, use a light box or, use an iPad. Try casting words in a variety of fonts should think fit together to write the following:
Psychogeography
Three places that you like and have visited
Three places which she would like to visit
unconscious
Derive
tournament
Desire
Energy
Flow
Map
Demarcation
Distinction
Regulation
Space
Then add lines which follow the contours of letters and which move between was joining parts of their outlines. You should try to avoid outlining one complete word but instead create zones which intermingle between words and letters. Use negative and positive space (that is to say the spaces outside letters as well as inside them).
Draw three such lines which can overlap one another but which must each cover both pages.
2. 4 Work on a new double page spread
2. 4 Work on a new double page spread
Start with the left side. Source different maps of the same place – such as your hometown of the location of your school or college. Ideally, these maps should free from different historical periods.
Use Photoshop to make them high contrast images and put them on transparent backgrounds. Print them off onto acetate in different colours and overlay them on a page in your sketchbook. If you don't have acetate try using tracing paper – for you could use both if you have access to post materials. Trace round any new combine shapes which appear from the overlapping lines of the drawings. Put these new shapes on the facing page (the right-hand side of this double page spread).
Go on a tour of the common areas of the maps take photos of what you see there. Use these photos of the basis for a set of drawings and illustrations in A 5 Size.
Use the colour blue for underpainting and add three more colours. Add 1.colour, one with the mid tone in one light 1 to create painted images of each location. For example, you might have dark blue underpainting and then add dark brown, green and yellow ochre. Pete at least six images on paper and work on them simultaneously colour by colour. Cut them out and stick them on your tracing paper image.
Activity:
Activity:
Open up your sketchbook to another clean double page spread.
Get some string, cut it into suitable length that will spread easily over both pages.
Lay the string out and smooth lines.
Make lines which are round and which overlap and become tangled in places.
Spray rounds and over the string with a diffuser or a water-based spray paint.
Make a series of white circles with a white crayon randomly spaced over the pages.
Use a dark colour and then repeat the spray effect with second and third colours and at different distances to create an interlaced and speckled effect with the overlaying colours. This might look a bit like a randomised pointillist painting.
Remove the string.
Where you have marks the white circles of crayon (alternatively used circles of paper keep in place with a little Pritt glue) you should retain the white colour. This is because the white crown should repulse water-based paint.
The string outline should also show up as a tangle set of white lines.
Turn some of the white circles into notes by adding text using similar ideas to the list given above.
Ensure that some knows describe politics join the line some do not.
2. 4 Day and Night
2. 4 Day and Night
Choose a new location and this is it two times – once during the day and once, at night.
Consider a town centre where you could visit busy shops during the day and pubs, nightclubs and café is at night.
Alternatively, think about a park which has a children's playground and which is friendly and safe by day and dark and atmospheric or slightly scary by night. (Always go to your night location with at least one other person and make sure that you stay safe).
Take photos and use them for source and reference. Remember, everything you do is considered to be a primary work and will help you gain extra marks.
On a double page in your sketchbook Masking tape into thin strips I mimic the plan or layouts of one of the following (use the Internet to find an appropriate image):
A star system
And electrical circuit
The design of a computer system
A bus route
Having stepped this in place with the thin lines of masking tape, use sponges and watering it to build up a painting of a sky with clouds. Use repeated layers to go from very wash and near stained ink, two thick allows which combine to make the ink appear almost opaque. (Remember, opaque main solid colour which you can't see through). As you work, you should add slightly more detail but do not allow the image of the cloud to become too detailed. The help with this, search for "cumulonimbus" on the Internet. This is a type of cloud which you will recognise.
Peel away the masking tape with the tip of a sharp knife when you're finished.
At textual elements in trace letters of the names of artists that you like or which you have worked at from this project.
Alternatively, you can use one or some of the following possible sets:
Some countries: one from each of the continents, some rich, some poor
Famous people: a writer, scientist, economist, architect, political leader, military figure, musician, sportsperson, philosopher.
Again, use the Internet to source suitable people if you can't think of any.
Historical times: for example, mediaeval Europe, the Parthian Empire, a Chinese. Such as the Ming Dynasty, a North American Indian specific., The Renaissance, or the industrial revolution.
Political events and natural disasters: Halley's Comet, Battle of Hastings, the great plague for/Black death, Siberian media, Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, the American Civil War, San Francisco earthquake, Krakatoa, Pearl Harbor, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Boxing Day tsunami, first or second Gulf War.
Or another or any other combination of similar and random listings which you think would look good
2. 6 Return to the body
2. 6 Return to the body
Activity:
Activity:
Use the techniques of the previous pages to produce a length system of the body use of these elements are starting points:
Hands
Feet
Legs
Torso
Parts of the face
Eyes – both (separately)
Nose
Mouth
Ears – both (separately)
Use lines to connect these parts and arrange the parts roughly in order going diagonally from top left to lower right across.
Use repeating and echoing lines, for example, making a set of curves with a lino and repeating these at different angles to make associations between elements and repeating rhythms across your image.
Use different styles to draw the body parts, for example:
Line drawing
Cross hatched shading
Motivational marks
Dots
Think about the media that you use.
As the image is mixed and multilayered, it is a good idea to use makes the multilayered media, this will increase the sense of an all over presence of the image. Make sure that you have use media in all parts, for example, do not do all the pencil drawing one part and all the crayon drawing in another. Rather instead, have elements of each medium in each part of the page.
Use some of the following:
Pencils, hard and soft, coloured, water-soluble
Crayons, soft and hard – always put hard crayons over soft ones
Watercolour. You could try soaking the water in places before you apply the colour to allow it to bleed spread.
Ink. Apply this with a range of different temperaments such as sticks, feathers and sponges. Try pressing clean dry paper over the top of wet ink pool some of the ink off and to achieve different effects.
Acrylic paint. Allow this to build up into thick paint (impasto) using stiff brushes or palette knives. Remember it is a good idea to work in layers building it up. Two thin layers will always be better than one thick one.
2. 7 Activity Either A Or B
2. 7 Activity Either A Or B
Activity A
Activity A
Create a series of linking lines that become an all over pattern over double page spread.
Base this on the previous piece but use a thick marker pen/brush and ink to start building set of marks stop
Consider whether this is an all over image and pattern or whether it will develop to have a loose subject/image. For example, look at the "peer and ocean" images of Pete wonder great design with broken and repeating elements or, look at "–" by Keith Haring to create an all over patent and flat space.
Add some annotation. Answer these points:
Say whether your intention is to render a flat, shallow or illusionistic space to the image.
Is it a diagram?
Is it a plan view or schematic image such as an architect's drawing?
Or, do you want to return to a more 3D rendering of space such as in a traditional painting like one by Canaletto?
Or, Activity B
Or, Activity B
Add boxes across the double page spread.
Cover these with paper and then use painting techniques to cover the surface.
Use layers of paint, starting with a sponge and watery paint and then progress to working paint into textures with a palette knife to create a scumbled background.
Try pouring paint and dropping it from a distance to create splashes, drips and other events.
Use a long brush and fit paint over the ages to achieve this as well.
When the background has dried, take away the rectangles of paper which were used to screen areas and paint and draw images onto them.
Choose what the images should show:
Parts of your body
Separate locations
Different aspects or parts of the location
Repeating images with the same meaning. For example all men, all women, all modern buildings, all American things et cetera
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