A Day In The Hands Of A Child's Game

Our Course: Leicester

Introduction

The concept of Psychogeography is the investigation into the effect of the built environment on the human mind. How do the geographical features and environmental aspects of the cityscape influence our emotions and sensations. 


The Project

Explore the Situationist Theory of Psychogeography through an original and creative project in which you have designed, whilst recording and documenting your work somehow through digital media. 


Approach

To analyse the psychogeography of our environment we decided to journey around the city of leicester. To create a feeling of drifting, losing control, we will place every decision on every move we make in the hands of a  child's game. The game although used under many names is commonly called the Paper Fortune-Teller. The idea is you  put in a number of options and you choose a number at random, the number leads to one of the options and you take it. In our case the options will be these four; Straight On, Turn Right, Turn Left or Go Back, keeping it relatively simple. Our plan is to either ask strangers we meet for a number look for the nearest number at our regular stops.

From a stationary perspective, watching Leicester's busy centre, the majority of the public seems to move with a motive to get somewhere quickly, be it work, an important meeting, professionally or socially. Therefore, we believed in basing our project around a presentation of the opposite. An opposite to the quick paced, serious and speedy lives of todays public - we agreed that an effective way to do this, was by leaving our decisions in the hands of a child's game, hence the title. We would find our next step at each junction, slowing our movements, allowing us to take in our city in a new light. 

Findings

As we walked we all agreed that our lack of target lead to us noticing a lot more about the city that we hadn't before. We found ourselves commenting more on the features of the environment such as architecture and decorations. It really showed how little we pay attention to things normally. With our new outlook and no where to be we were spotted  and discussed obvious things that for some reason before had gone unnoticed despite passing them before. We also realised how much effort is put into the city in some areas and less in others, as we left the main centre of Leicester it was less clean, there was less lighting, and less life. We also realised watching our recordings back how the level of discussion outside of the centre within our group dropped in frequency and volume, the dark and the tighter alleyways had a noticeable effect on us. In regards to our guide - the Paper Fortune-Teller - it worked well creating a definitely random journey also incorporating pieces of the landscape. It might not be the best way to travel however, as although whilst drifting you may have no where to be or time limit but it does get very frustrating turning back on yourself several times.


View Leicester in a larger map

 How to Make Your Own Paper Fortune Teller:

How to make your own Paper Fortune-Teller
 
 

This free website was made using Yola.

No HTML skills required. Build your website in minutes.

Go to www.yola.com and sign up today!

Make a free website with Yola