Psychogeography Project

View Psychogeography Project in a larger map

A Psychogeography project allows us to look at cities in new ways and invited us to take part in communication, geographical and cultural expansion. 

   This art form came about at the time of Situationists, the convergance of political and artistic movements. Situationists did not agree with the notion of a ``controlled'' urban environment and therefore began to explore connections between location and mind, given the term Psychogeography. Surrealists later subverted the reality of this work and made it an art form.

  This allows us as, a growing mass audience to participate in media culture and consumption in a more geographically artistic sense.  With the technological expansion of Web 2.0 we are able to create our own maps of our communities, cities and journies. 

   This is precisely what I have done to explore the ways of the Situationists movement of Psychogeography.
Before commencing with my final idea I researched other forms of Psychogeography. I liked the work of Riverains, who exhibited art exhibitions of Shakespearean locations and Jack the Ripper. I thought this was a really clever way to connect historical locations with modern art. I also really liked the work of Daniel Belasco in Berlin in 2003-2009. His work involved himself more than the actual map, focusing on memories and associations, which I found inspiring. 
  My first idea for my project was to take a series of photos in the Leicester Lanes, every half hour for eight to ten hours to record the changes in light, weather and record the movement of people. However, when I went to do this, the weather did not seem to change as much as I had hoped since it was constantly cloudy and I think since it was winter, not enough people were moving through the Lanes as there would be during the summer. 
 Instead I decided to take a journey through Leicester and photograph the road I travelled on. I attached a photo to each street on Google Maps to create a visual journey of my way from Walnut Street to Victoria Park. I started out with wanting to make an hours journey and wanted to take exactly fifteen photos of each street I was on. I made sure I did this exactly and my final destination was Victoria Park. 
  This map shows my journey yet also expresses the planning I did previously, showing the convergance of mind and geography. 

Resources and readings for this topic: 
http://empedia.info/maps 
Debord, Guy, 1958, {website} http://bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm
Most of the information I used in this post was from lecture/workshop notes in class.

Save a Starving Student Campaign

Aims and Rationale
       Our brief was to make either a three to five minute campaign video or a series of shorter videos as part of a campaign project. After brainstorming our ideas our, group decided to make a parody of a charity campaign. We have chosen to do our parody on poverty campaigns but focus on the poverty of students. We are aiming to make people aware of how poor students are, with an emotional response. We want to create a series of shots following a particular student dealing with their poverty. We are going to show a pupil looking through their cupboards for food however the cupboards are empty. Following this, we want to show begging for food, stealing from another person’s cupboard, and searching around their room for money. We want to include phone numbers to ring, and websites to visit where the target audience is free to donate money and sponsor a student to help them through their university life.
    We want to target our campaign video to middle, upper class people who will be able to afford to sponsor a student. We also want to include parents and university graduates who will be able to empathise for the people subjected.

Influences and Resources: 
Koster, A, 2009, {website} http://web2expo.blip.tv/file/1948713/
http://battlefront.co.uk/