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Call for collaboration in the

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@socialfiction.org

 Thank you



(picture by Christina Ray, Glowlab )