Call for collaboration in THE HOT SUMMER OF GENERATIVE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY 2002

[anna balint]

Call for collaboration in 

THE HOT SUMMER OF GENERATIVE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY 2002

After some initial experiments with navigating through the city on a generative 
      algorithm we observed results encouraging enough to call for a 'Hot Summer 
      of Generative Psychogeography'.

Generative Psychogeography is an open source concept which describes a method 
      to explore the urban environment. It is as simple as this: stroll through 
      the city on directions like 'first street left, second street right, first 
      street right, repeat'. The simplicity of this route can be deceptive, it 
      turns out that the route which you will take is difficult to predict for 
      more than 3 turns (in an asymmetrical city, that is). Add to this that by 
      strolling like this you pass through the city in a way which is so thoroughly 
      alien to the way you normally use the city that you find yourself confronted 
      with the city in new light.

The principle is in large part developed from the ideas behind Conway's 
      'Game of Life'.
Until know we have only undertaken sessions in different cities in The 
     Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam & Utrecht). We want 
      to find out how the stroll algorithm behaves 
      in cities with different street grids. By calling for a Hot Summer of Psychogeography 
      we hope that the concept can be developed further collectively. That in 
      this way exciting ideas will emerge & collide.

After a single posting on the Rhizome email-list we got quite some replies 
      & we are happy to say that some of them have made it into a project of their 
      own.
  
New York, London, Frankfurt, Linz, Zagreb... all of them have been explored 
      or will be explored by a generative psychogeographical experiment soon. 
      The open sourcing of the concept has already produced results, new approaches 
      we would never have thought of. But the invitation still stands....

How can you collaborate on the Hot Summer of Generative Psychogeography?

Easy. Invite some friends, hand them all a different algorithm & start walking. 
      Social Fiction hopes that you will give us a report on your findings, which 
      we will publish on the site. Also we will publish your announcement here, 
      so helping you a little bit in promoting the event.

As our own specialisation is writing, our research has been mainly focused 
      on theorizing the different technical/socio-political aspects of psychogeography. 
      We are extremely interested in every way you can think of to visualize the 
      event. Of course if you want to participate by organising you're own session 
      that doesn't mean you have to follow our orders. We welcome any improvement 
      or variation on what we have come up with. 

For more detailed information we direct you to our site: 
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography
here you will also find our 'manual'.

Or you can mail us at psychogeography at socialfiction.org
 Thank you