Monday, April 5, 2010

Operation Ambulation

Walking with heightened attention to one’s surroundings, of their meanings at the moment of sentient awareness in relation to a specific context, allows one to spatially locate oneself within a socio-constructed lexicon or urban geography. A body can begin to draw out certain meanings of places: to understand the character of neighborhoods, edifices, space uses and historical evolution. The state of enclosure which defines, to a certain degree, all urban space is the specimen to be observed. Thus, the stroll through nature or through the countryside, regardless of its calming and therapeutic effects, is of no import to psychogeography. Such spaces are attributed a different status, even with the fact that most bucolic settings have been manipulated by the human hand in some fashion, and therefore beyond the scope of enclosure in the metropolitan sense.

Beginning to understand the emotive and cognitive effects of enclosure on the scale of the modern city is a proper theme. Within the early 21st century, urban spaces and their continual transformations, we still struggle to comprehend the amalgamations of forms and objects; just as the number of amalgamations and objects expands exponentially. The fluid nature of human settlement – the constant state of production, renovation and demolition of objects – makes difficult the acquiescence to observation. An ambulatory mode of inquiry seems to be one possible way to discover such mutable spaces.

The scale of the city is of the human form by orders of magnitude. Using observers that conduct experiments, the effects of such enclosure can be viewed as data. This data, being recorded, can later be observed to understand enclosure and used to generate layers of meaning (maps). Such activities can be much fun. They can also be very uncomfortable, depending on the ambient qualities of the enclosures encountered or the climate.

Activities such as this are absolutely essential to the comprehension of urban geography. This comprehension can assist the inhabitants of vast enclosure to find their way and gain identity from objective reality. This understanding may enable them to gain a level of independence from that reality, to humanize their surroundings and their particular lived condition by knowing the language of enclosure.

Derives, as proposed by the Situationists, provide a heightened level of insight of urban geography, as is the sole intent of the derive. “In a derive one or more persons during a certain period of time drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a derive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.” (Internationale Situationniste #2, 1958) By participating in the process suggested by the derive, one begins to move through space by allowing the meaning of such space to move through them.

It is important to call special attention to the fact that the very definition of the derive diminishes the possibility of chance to occur. I argue that chance isn’t possible within an activity such as a derive, much as it’s not possible outside the context of the derive. Chance only exists in the absence of knowledge. Chance is the territory of ignorance and ignorance is a voluntary action. All things happen as the result of previous actions. External forces, of some sort or another, are used to guide decisions and direction in the derive. Direction may be gathered from an action such as the rolling of a six-sided die. The subsequent action will be one of only six possible outcomes. One can be sure that one of six possible actions will be taken. There is no chance that a seventh or eighth or ninth (ad infinitum) action will be taken. If one is to be guided by visual cues, then only visual cues will be followed and not other sensory cues. Only if one is to be foolish enough to deny the laws of physics can one argue for the cause of chance.

Probability is a more likely contender as the driving force of the derive and of the meanings of urban geography. There are a certain number of meanings, roughly proportionate to the number of points of reference used to decipher such meanings. In a city, the meanings of the city may be as numerous as the number of inhabitants though is likely to be less (cities of schizophrenics notwithstanding). Actions of an observer within an enclosure will likely be guided by the sentient excretions of objective forms in combination with the ambient climatic conditions and their resultant impact on the subject. From these actions, a cognitive map can be initiated as a mode of communicating the psychogeographical effects of the city.