"Even though I've lived in Shepperton for 23 years, if I need an infinitely mysterious place I don't have any problems finding one. All my fiction is based on the perception of that set of mysterious cyphers which in fact constitutes reality. Our central nervous systems provide us with a conventional view of reality that most people accept in order to be able to cope with the day-to-day business of crossing rooms, walking up staircases. I mean, unless one accepted a high degree of conventionalizing, reality would be impossible. You can't start off every second by saying, "What is this white structure beside me? Uh--it's a wall.."The thing about reason is that it rationalizes reality for us. It provides a convenient explanation. Perhaps too convenient. I'm very interested in dismantling every assumption I can see, however trivial it might be. I'm making a whole sort of Christopher Columbus-like discoveries about the nature of floors, windows, carpets and the like. Because often, behind the most trivial things, lie enormous mysteries. I was joking about taking walls too seriously, but in fact the sort of architectural spaces we inhabit are enormously important--they are powerful. If every member of the human race were to vanish, our successors from another planet could reconstitute the psychology of the poeple on this planet from its architecture. The architecture of modern apartments, let's say, is radically different from that of a baroque palace. I'm interested in deciphering the whole system of codes that I see--in dismantling that whole conventionalized apparatus with which our central nervous systems cope with the business of day-to-day living--which of course, is the greatest trap facing us all"
presenting IlinxGroup, a music and technology project I have been working on with David Kanaga. The goal is to inject a bit of chaos into computer music, find new directions for man-machine play.
"coyote brings order to chaos and chaos to order"
"from the foolishness of the coyote, man learns what to do and what not do"
» Coyote Old Man- a fine doctor, a great MEDICINE MAN »
1. coyote was given a scientific name, Canis latrans, only in 1823, two years before missouri made him an outlaw (a ”dillinger” or a ”geronimo”) by putting a BOUNTY on his scalp.
2. coyote is an agent of change- bringing order to CHAOS and chaos to ORDER. He is “the spirit of disorder, the ENEMY OF BOUNDARIES.”
» coyote’s medicine » COYOTE’S MUSIC »
3. chaos will need to be looked at with completely new eyes, and given a different place in our hearts: as midwife for creative solutions, as true “coyote medicine”. This is what some tribes call a medicine that chooses PARADOX as a teacher, DANCES with chaos, and loves to ride the horse facing BACKWARDS. Do we still have chaos in us?
4. coyote’s CREATIVE accomplishments are almost always the result of ACCIDENT, usually in the pursuit of selfish or irrational GOALS. From Coyote’s foolishness, we gain WISDOM— learn what, and what not, to do.
5. coyote, trickster TRANSFORMER, FOREVER cobbling new REALITIES— emerging as drifting collaged SPACES built from the available materials.
6. in coyote’s music the dominance of the SOLID, as a principle, has given way to the FLUID— rhythmically, texturally, harmonically, structurally. coyote LIBERATES musical OBJECTS at all scales and allows them to dissolve into pure MOTION.
» Coyote Old Man, trickster transformer!
7. we are seeking a new music, COYOTE’S GIFT, totally insane but LIFE-AFFIRMING, & we NEED it NOW.
Use a map to disorient oneself, use a map in a way that betrays its purpose, use a map in a way which reveals its failure to accurately represent the infinitely complex contours of the territory...
To warp a map's representational aspect, as Debord explains, is an effective means to provoking a new and exciting experience of a common place. This shifts the locus of meaning from the object being interpreted to the interpreter. The map's deterministic quality vanishes-- space becomes Open.
Debord shows that one can accomplish this effect simply by using a map of one place to navigate the territory of another place. This tactic relies on the interpretive leaps the walker makes while engaging with a set of vague directions. The culmination of this interpretative decision making constitutes a unique path, a trace of the walker's moment-to-moment decision-making.
A walker expresses their particular way of being through their path. A walker simultaneously composes and performs a place through their path. For instance, a short cut does not exist until someone takes it.
A musical analogy:
Here's a visual score for the ANS Synthesiser. Its by composer / audio engineer Stanislav Kreichi
The visual scores of John Cage, Anthony Braxton and others function similarly to these misused maps, shifting the locus of meaning from the object of interpretation to the interpreter. A visual score is made up of abstract lines, shapes and colors, rather than traditional musical notation: as such, interpretive decisions constitute the piece, rather than a pre-determined formula.
The visual score is less a map than a territory to be explored. It is a composition of sorts, but one to be composed through its performance-- through the interpretative decisions of the players. Similarly, Debord's map of London loses its map-character once transposed on a different place, and becomes a territory unto itself, containing an infinite variety of possible interpretations. Neither the visual score nor the decontextualized map are actually representational, though both play at it. The impetus for interpretive decision-making springs from this tension.
A visual score could be walked, a map could be played. To the walker, the lines of the score included above could suggest cadence, duration, or direction. To the musician, the map could represent shape, texture, drones or sharp blasts. Exploring these possibilities only requires an interpreter to connect the map to the territory.
David Kanaga is a friend, musician and programmer whose musical program, ada(co-designed with musician and programmer Josh Bothun), explores the synaesthetic possibilities of visual music. Visual music describes a synthesis of visual and aural art, or the implementation of musical properties (rhythm, counterpoint, movements, etc.) in silent visual media. Think Stan Brakhage, or fireflies. ada presents an interesting take on visual music because it is interactive, which allows one to play rather than merely listen/see. In this dialogue I conducted with David, we explore the features and possibilities of visual music, focusing on ada. The program is available for free download here.
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Your program, "ada", resists classification: it seems to me to be at once a game, an instrument, a composition, and because of its openness, probably entirely different things to other users. I think it's this multifaceted usability that makes it a particularly creative, and not to mention, useful tool in a cultural environment in which individuals desire a unique, personal experience of the vast universe of information accessible to the senses.
I'm not quite sure what ada is--it's exploring new territory, for sure. Not entirely new, of course; there have been similar software projects by others that are worth mentioning here: Audiovisual Environment Suite by Golan Levin, Electroplankton by Toshio Iwai, Mono World by kanoguti, and probably more that I've forgotten/don't know about. Similar ideas have also been explored in many non-portable art projects of the past: experimental composition (Cage, Feldman, Cardew, Zorn, etc.), happenings (Kaprow...), installations (don't know much about the history of these...), and, again, probably more; unfortunately, most of these forms are much less accessible (geographically) than a piece of software. I think a big thing that's unique about ada, as well as the other music-software projects that I mentioned, is simply their portability. On a large scale, many ideas like these have been explored, and very successfully. Using the same ideas in mass-distributable software just makes them more accessible... How many times I've seen images/videos of an installation that looks absolutely amazing, but have been disappointed to find that I would need to live in New York or LA to properly experience the work firsthand. So, to address your second point: I think it's this mass-distribution that makes it a particularly creative, and not to mention, useful tool in a cultural environment in which individuals desire a unique, personal experience of the vast universe of information accessible to the senses.
John Cage visual score, from Silence
ada screenshots
"ada" compels its users to explore how visual, aural, and tactile media interplay and coalesce in an interactive, creative way. Youtube, Pandora and other immensely popular websites offer a jointly aural and visual experience, so it is a fact that the web-savvy (or even web-aware) public are adequately conditioned to experience media in this synesthetic way . "ada" provides a medium for people conditioned to consume this way to create this way, which is what makes it, to me, a technologically optimistic statement in the era of information overload.
It's difficult for me to think of YouTube or Pandora as synesthetic in the same way that ada is. There might be some relationship, but I think that, more than contemporary computer/internet/etc. culture being ready (now) for multi-sensory interactive works like these, humanity has probably always been ready for such things (in one way or another); technology is only just now catching up. Indeed, I suspect that Neanderthals might have enjoyed the game just as much as many humans do today. Even more removed from contemporary human culture, I recently saw a video of a cat playing (and enjoying?) Smule's Magic Piano (more playful music software) on the iPad. I think that, in more ways than one, ada is guided by fairly primitive (meaning the first) aesthetic ideals, and there's undoubtedly a good amount of optimism in this.
I mentioned before that it is difficult to say whether "ada" is a game, an instrument, a composition, a hybrid of those things, or something different entirely. While playing, I felt like I was simultaneously listening to your music and making my own. It seems authored--as a recording or composition would--in the readymade tones, textures and dynamics at the user's disposal; but numerous potential realizations of that material and the constant engagement of the user permit a great degree of personal creativity (author-ity) on the other end as well. How do you feel "ada" redefines the relationship between producers and consumers of art, and accordingly, the acts of artistic production and consumption?
The relationship between producers and consumers of art has always been blurry, confusing, and interactive. There's well-articulated theory on this somewhere, I'm sure. The thing that ada does with this blurry relationship is the same thing that all videogames have likewise done: the consumer provides the game with data (is a producer of the data), which is then consumed by processes authored by the producer. I think that in all interactive works, the data provided by the consumer (now, I'll say: the decisions made by the player) should be of central importance to the ultimate meaning of the work. This, of course, is a central tenet of any good game design philosophy, of which there are many... So, the player creates meaning; what does the author do? S/he creates (1) meaningful possibilities for the player, and (2) meaningful processes/systems that operate independently of the player's decisions (but which also can be--and should be--played with). As far as what meaningful means here: that's different for every author, and an individual's understanding of this meaning will form the expressive/authored tone of a given work. Ultimately, these are difficult ideas and questions that, for me, are best explored and answered by working directly with the medium itself. Non-verbal answers, you know?
"ada" is interactive, it is "open", but it definitely places limitations on the user--particularly in how they can use the product of their use: the unique occurrence of sound and image in time and space that results from their particular interaction with the program. Music software, like Ableton or Garage Band, are interactive and musical, like "ada", but they have a function to capture the user's play, which marks the transition from improvisation to composition; Photoshop is interactive and visual, like "ada", but similarly enables users to capture their creative activity. Having this ability unquestionably alters how people create in those programs. "ada" provides an improvisational creative experience, and limits it to that by omitting the "save" function. How central was the idea of "improvisation" in "ada"?
The idea was pretty central for me: play shouldn't need to be saved. In most videogames, you can save progress, but not necessarily a recording/document of how exactly you made that progress. I think this is a good thing: to forget, to spend a lot of time forgetting; or rather, to not be encouraged to remember. Josh (the game's other designer) and I talked about having a save feature in the game, which could be used to recall game-states, but not to record the audio itself. I still think this would have been cool, but we didn't get around to it. Half-Life was the first game I played that allowed me to save anywhere, and I saved everywhere. I would shoot an alien, and save. Some say this play style reduces the impact of the game, and it certainly does reduce a kind of impact (challenge), but it creates another kind. There's some music to it, to memory, which I think can be used to great effect in an improvisational context. In John Zorn's game piece Cobra, the Sound Memory cues do wonders with this idea of improvised musical memory. Everyone is improvising freely (or, restricted by other rules), and if a player likes what they hear, they hold their hand to their head, the sign for Sound Memory. Everyone remembers what they are doing, and continues to improvise. Then, any player can recall that sound memory at any time, and everyone goes back to what they were playing when the state was saved. It's really beautiful, and, to me, is a brilliant solution to the eternal conflict (or dance?) between structure/composition and improvisation; here, composition emerges from improvisation.
Does it offer a statement on the aesthetics of recorded music vs. live music?
Does it? It's a portable/distributable possibility of live music.
If one views "ada" as an open musical composition, interesting structural features become evident that would not if considered solely as a game. I'm thinking in particular about the menu screen. For those who have not yet played, the menu screen presents the user with visual icons hyperlinked to the eight possible "play-spaces" ("levels" implies goals, which the game disregards, and "instrument/visualization/environment/etc" seems too long winded, so please excuse my academic, techno-babble vocabulary, it seems necessary)...
(People in the games community often say "toys" about this sort of thing. I also prefer "play-spaces," since it's less judgmental, and is broad in a way that is absolutely essential in allowing games to become whatever they want.)
ada menu screen from which to access the "play-spaces"
...You recently gave an "ada" performance (of "ada", using "ada"?) in which you moved from one play-space to another, which seemed to impart a structure of block-like movements. Did you see that performance as a unified statement or did your play in each of the eight distinct spaces constitute a series of performances? The reason I ask is this: I noticed that when the user reaches the menu screen, after pressing the "q" key to stop playing in one play-space and enter another, the music from the previous screen carries onto the menu, soundtracking the transition from one "movement" to another in a way that suggests continuity between play-spaces. Is this meant to connect the eight play-spaces? More broadly, how do you feel the design of "ada" lends itself to performance? What possibilities have you imagined?
Well, the music carrying on into the menu is actually a bug. It wasn't intentional, but worked out nicely. It certainly does connect the play-spaces, though a lot could be done to make them even more connected if that was the goal. As far as my performance goes: I did see it as a "unified statement," as one performance. Of course, I was playing in front of people, so I wanted to give it a musicality throughout that I probably wouldn't have felt compelled to do if I were playing by myself... Alone, I usually play in each space for quite a while. The performance's block structure had as much to do with the fact that I was trying to demo as many of the spaces as possible in 6 minutes as it did with the fact that I actually do like block structures very much :)
This post will serve as an archive for walking games. More to come!
Q: Why impose rules on walking?
A: to break habit TO BRING ABOUT A DYNAMIC NOVEL EXPERIENCE OF PLACE
guy debord says: "the action of chance is naturally conservative and in a new setting tends to reduce everything to habit or to an alternation between a limited number of variants. Progress means breaking through fields where chance holds sway by creating new conditions more favorable to our purposes."
Sufis practice a form of "intentional and symbolic wandering" called siyaha. In his book Sacred Drift, Peter Lamborn Wilson describes siyaha as a "game with rules", highlighting how the structure siyaha imposes on an ordinary activity like walking provokes extraordinary leaps of imagination and mindfulness. The rules provide a focus that enables the walker to perceive what they may habitually ignore: the fine grain interrelationships of the objects, processes, sensations of a particular place. Simple, specific commands like "watch your feet" reveal details that may go unnoticed, but are nevertheless present and affective, like the impressions one's feet make in wet grass, the plodding rhythm of walking in dry sand, and furthermore, the memories, sensations, and desires prompted by these interactions.
via Wilson...
"There have existed various styles of Sufi walking; presumably dervishes of earlier and more "golden" eras practiced a sort of freestyle wandering, but by the medieval period siyaha had become a game with rules. For example, some orders defined the permissible amount of time a dervish could rest in any one place--forty nights for instance, or only one night--while others demanded such ascetic practices (which may still be seen in India today) as the wearing of heavy chains or women's garments--or that one watch one's feet while walking. The overall purpose of such precision must be to induce a state of permanent awareness and concentration on every detail, till it becomes luminous detail.
With such practice, the walker achieves a state of mind (or soul) similar to that of the lucid dreamer, or intelligent dreamer, who knows "that in the sensory world of fixed engendered existence there are transmutations at every instant, even though the eyes and the senses do not perceive them, except in speech and movement"
Sufi scholar W.C. Chittick comments:
"People know that dreams need interpretation (ta'bir). The word ta'bir derives from the root 'b.r., which signifies 'crossing over,' hence, to traverse, to ford, to pass. The interpreter (mu'abbir) is he who passes from the sensory form of the dream to the meaning which has put on the clothing of form. From the same root we have 'ibara' or 'verbal expression,' which is the passage from understanding to exposition.
When the nature of the cosmos is truly 'verified', the knower sees it to be a form of imagination, in need of interpretation like a dream" (Chittick, The Sufi Path)
The Walker is he who travels with his reflection in search of the signs and proofs of the existence of his Maker. In his walking he finds no proof for that other than his own possibility. The physical world and the imaginal world here coincide with the precise "fit" of total identification."
William S Burroughs developed a walking game similar to siyaha, "walking on colors":
“Another exercise that is very effective is walking on colors. Pick out all the reds on a street, focusing only on red objects–brick, lights, sweaters, signs. Shift to green, blue, orange, yellow. Notice how the colors begin to stand out more sharply of their own accord. I was walking on yellow when I saw a yellow amphibious jeep near the corner of 94th Street and Central Park West. It was called the Thing. This reminded me of the Thing I knew in Mexico. He was nearly seven feet tall and had played the Thing in a horror movie of the same name, and everybody called him the Thing, though his name was James Arness. I hadn’t thought about the Thing in twenty years, and would not have thought about him except walking on yellow at that particular moment.”
Kathleen Daniel is a musician, animator, writer, painter, actress, political commentator, mystic and much more. She is a true polymath in an age of specialization when, unfortunately, that designation seems obsolete. Her youtube videos combine original music and animation to tell stories, express transcendent states of mind, and, generally, offer a strange and beautiful glimpse into the world as seen/imagined by Kathleen Daniel. As clearly stated in the subheading of her myspace page, Kathleen Daniel is "tripping". The result is some astoundingly original, individually expressive art that makes Flying Lotus' free beats seem "locked-in", and Jim Woodring's "Frank" seem starkly realistic. [Please excuse my inclination toward hyperbole; FlyLo and Woodring have my fond admiration : ) ] All and all, some pretty unconventional stuff for a lady with MTV aspirations. The day her work makes it on MTV is the day I get cable and renew my hope for the soul of commercial America.
Many thanks to Kathleen for agreeing to the interview. I urge you, the reader, to follow her work in the future. No doubt, she'll keep putting it "out there". Free content can be found at the above hyperlinks, her music is available in CD form at CD Baby.
A primer:
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How long have you been making music/art?
Growing up in the ghetto as a teenager, I was the lead singer in a group with my 4 homegirls. But it was nothing serious because this was before the internet and a contract with a label was the only option, which was not happening. The group fell apart because we were too busy just trying to stay in school.
Please describe your development as an artist.
I´m self-taught from the time I was in my teens. Later I had an exhibit and a reporter for San Mateo Weekly did an article on my oil paintings.
Where do you find inspiration?
I was inspired by Salvador Dali, and for music it is: the Temptations, Luther Vandross, Michael Jackson,Chaka Khan, Mariah Carey.
Your work possesses a truly unique rhythm--have you always been interested in loose, unconventional music and visuals?
I am very independent. So much so that my mother had to tell me "being too independent isn´t always good." But that never changed anything, so my music and art are all about feeling. Like the color combination of black and orange reminds me of halloween, freaks. A certain shade of purple reminds me of death because that was the color of the linings in funeral caskets.
Your musical influences are predominantly "pop", which is identifiable in your work in trace amounts--but only trace amounts. Do you view your work as "experimental", or otherwise reactionary to popular aesthetics?
I go with the flow, especially with my music. My mother always said, "you can´t please everybody so please yourself first", and that is what I do. I live in the moment.
Please tell me about your creative process.
Because I trip 24/7 I bring my tape recorder on my daily walk. I sometimes watch TV with the sound off so that it does not impede my thinking. The process is not always the same. Some times the song comes to mind, then the video, but other times it´s the other way around.
Do you have any collaborators?
No because when dealing with people there is always some bullshit.
Do you do the voice-acting in your videos, in addition to the music, animation and screenplays?
I am a character myself and so do every thing alone.
What tools do you use to render your music/animation?
Cubase, Ozone4, Daz3d, Poser 7 and Premiere
Your work exhibits a sense of mysticism and a connection to nature, but also embraces technology in its form and imagery. No other mystics I can think of use youtube as a medium, or embrace Second Life style animation. What possibilities do you see in the intersection of technology and nature? Is there mystical, transcendent possibilities in technology?
Mother Nature rules this planet and so not to embrace nature is denial. Seeing as I don´t do gigs youtube is a way to promote my stuff; the other being MTV, hopfully my next step. I like technology because it presents another vehicle to create and speeds the process.
"Tripping" seems to be a prominent theme in your work. Is this "tripping" strictly in the psychedelic sense, or does it mean something more to you?
I was and am a hippy at heart and know the mind is stronger than the body and has no limits. No, it is not limited to psychedelics because people under stress trip out verbally and physically. Tripping is the word I use, others use: freak out and nervous breakdown.
How does "tripping" influence your art?
I´m in my own zone so there is no limit to what I can create and so don´t worry about who I might offend which can stymie my creative ability.
Please tell me about your experiences with ESP.
For a ghetto-child only occupied with surviving this was a subject I didn´t know existed. It was a horrible situation that brought it to the surface. One night I dreamt that suited-police came to the bay window and flashed their badge, then they were inside my apartment, telling me I was under arrest for murder. In real life, a day later detectives came to the bay window, flashed their badge. I opened the door. They said, "you are under arrest for murder." This was the beginning of a series of ESP experiences, and when I begin to read about it. ESP is a way your mind deals with stress. What brought them in the first place was that the white man I was trying to leave, did kill the man I was to leave with and being a black woman, was arrested too. That led to another experience while in Sybil Brand. I had just got there and had a strong taste for an apple. Why I don´t know, but I strolled over to a girl who was packing to leave. She reached in her locker and handed me an apple. Another experience, still in Sybil Brand, I dreamt I was arguing with the woman who claimed to the police that I was guilty. When I woke up and about 15 minutes later she entered the dorm, saw me and was quickly escorted out. Those are just a few.
The imagery in your animation is alternately beautiful and grotesque--would you call your animation dreams, nightmares or something entirely different?
All the above, because I have no limits.
Recently, in an interview with Fact Magazine, musician Natalie Beridze stated the following: "I think it would be a big undermining of the process of art and-music-making to waste it on politics. [The] Process of work is probably the only area of absolute intimacy and freedom. Those two things have absolutely no resemblance to politics." How do you respond to this statement?
The key is the word "freedom" and so if I am feeling deeply about an issue I use my work to express and that may include politics. I don´t limit myself -- that would be like burying your head in the sand.
Your work often addresses political themes. What do you see as the relationship between art and politics?
I don´t see how any self-conscious artist can avoid politics because it is a major part of our lives. The oil spill in the gulf of Mexico and the Arizona law are two examples. But then, I believe my purpose on earth is to be a messanger; the reason I have gone through so many changes in life and why I was blessed with so much talent. I don´t forget where I came from.
Is the process of making art a political one to you?
No, my art is a way to release and express my feelings and belief. But every now and then politics will come into play.
Have you had to hold down a day job to support your creative work?
Of course, because being a ghetto child I would have to work or be homeless.
Is the "real world" for Kathleen Daniel as strange as it seems in the videos? Or does their imaginative landscape provide a necessary escape?
My past "real world" was wild and stressed and only strange when the ESP came to light. Now it is serene but that does not change my ability to imagine the strange, which is my escape from the hypocracy and injustice of our society.
How long have you lived in Germany? Why did you move there? Would you call it home?
I came to Germany in 1979, then returned to california in 1981, then returned to Germany in 1993 because I could not get a job, being that I was not bilingual. But do not call it home. My home is USA and where I plan to return as soon as I have something to return to, meaning my work has risen to the next level.
I recently watched your "Cutty Sark" history, which combines a historical narrative with your characteristically out-there animation. Your "Citi-Bank" criticism uses a similar expository style. These represent a significant departure from your more abstract work, like "Old Friends" or "Paranoid". How do historical and political commentary factor into your creative vision?
"Old Friends" and "Paranoid" are music videos. "Cutty Sark" was a project I was asked to submit to. I chose to do it for a change, as I said I have no limits. Everything happens for a reason: I created "Citibank" to relieve the stress I was going through while dealing with the bank´s ineptness.
Do you see continuity between your more expository and your more abstract work?
I will continue to do just what I´m doing whatever style it is, but my goal is to direct one of my screenplays and include my music.
Your videos often end abruptly, without a clear conclusion or resolution. This doesn't undermine the message, but disrupts its flow and clarity. Can you describe why you choose to do this?
I normally only upload half of a video on youtube and so they will end abrupt. The full version I save for those who promote my stuff, in that case I will send the full version -- with instructions that they can only allow half for downloads. With few exceptions, I only have half on my own site.
What does the future hold for Kathleen Daniel, creatively or otherwise?
"The make-it-up-as-you-go walk
Start walking in any direction you want and decide where to go next at every crossroad. There is a story of Andre Breton, Luis Aragon and two other Surrealists walking through France somewhere in the 1930ties (?) on this principle.
The chase walk
Decide on a target (people, animals, smells, etc) and follow it. Great fun with immense potential to reveal the ordinary secrets of random things. Walking a turtle (Baudelaire) or a lobster (De Nerval) might or might not be part of this category.
The derangement-of-the-senses walk
Take excessive drugs and walk and walk and walk: conceptually simple, well established (Dada, Benjamin, DeQuincey, hordes of homeless and clubbers), hard to remember.
The map-and-the-territory walk
Maps are meant to help you find your way in a place you are unfamiliar with. But they can also be used to defamiliarize yourself with a place you do know. From Situationist writing on Unitary Urbanism comes the example of navigating through Paris on a map of London. The trick is not in the map itself but in the interpretative act of mixing the abstract and the concrete in order to create an itinerary from the conflicts that arise between the two.
The restrained walk
Draw an imaginary line on the map and follow it: walk the invisible course of hidden rivers or metrolines or sewage pipes or occult powerlines. Iain Sinclair used this in his psychogeo classic Lights out for the Territory. Richard Long has a piece in which in drew a circle on the map and walked all roads it enclosed.
The really-I-must-buy-a-pencil walk
Take to the streets under some false pretence ("I really need a new pencil") and "indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life -- rambling the streets". Presented as the great escape from daily sorrows by Virginia Woolf in her story "Street Haunting" this type of walk reinvents Benjamin's flaneur without the dandified posturing.
The generative walk
Best known by its haiku: second left, first right, third left, repeat. The terms of this formula are at will and the principle it establishes can be extended into the formation of pedestrian computers. This is blowing my own trumpet so other psychogeo hacks might fail to include it despite its independently verified psychogeographic power."
Bey's imagined society is far more practical, accessible, even normal than its fantastical language conveys. This form of building/dwelling-- "to use local, found materials simply because they are there, usable and natural, and to let them determine one's aesthetic, rather than to use them because one believes in it" (Higgins, Fantastic Architecture*)--has always been the modus operandi of nomads, pilgrims, squatters, and more recently, occupiers. This is a process-based form of building/dwelling, in which the architecture of a place emerges through a moment to moment engagement with its particularities.
"What did I notice? Particulars! The vision of the great One is myriad."
A morning walk reveals discarded wood, sheet metal, splintered furniture--all useful for construction, dwelling. An afternoon walk reveals a disused wood shed, an abandoned factory, a cave--all useful for cultivation, dwelling. Rather than possessing intrinsic beauty (the myth which drives commodity fetishism), the beauty of the materials is revealed thru their use. This is a place that emerges and re-emerges thru the fragmentation and creative recombination of its particular materials.
The building/dwelling practices of Drop City, a 1960s intentional community located in Southern Colorado, provide a useful illustration. The community consisted of a network of geodesic domes and zomes, constructed from locally foraged materials--car tops, bottle caps, nails, two by fours, railroad ties, chicken wire. In mark matthews' Droppers, founder E.V.D Bernofsky explains "During the construction period , we were always accumulating found material from around the area. We would assemble it into massive collages...the domes themselves became collages that we could get inside of". In Drop City, shelter was born of an art practice and was experienced as an inhabitable art object. Its architecture emerged from the active engagement of the Dropper's imagination with their place.
Our cities and towns have long been suffering the residual effects of another form of utopian building--one in which imagination is imposed on place, rather than engaged with it (see practitioners Haussman, Le Corbusier, Moses). Sterility, boredom and unrest arise from this form of building; overdetermination suffocates erratic currents of vitality and creativity, and as a result, inhabitants of such environments often express these forces through frustrated destruction (consider last year's London riots: the project of an energized community, like Drop City, but one of quite different character). Home delivery of food and entertainment means high rise residents find little reason to leave their castlekeep, children's play occurs in determined spaces like playgrounds and pools , wilderness is experienced in its constructed form--parks, walking is most commonly practiced while shopping.**
Such a form of building alienates inhabitants from their place, because there is no detectable trace of place (context) in the structure itself. Monuments of steel and glass may provide a sweeping view of a place, but they do not facilitate an intimate engagement with it. In an ideal process-based practice of building/dwelling, when inside, what is outside should be visible, not simply through the windows, but in the structural materials, style, indigenous attitude of the structure. Viewed from the outside, the structure should be fluidly integrated in its place, indistinguishable from the character of its context. This seems to be an intuitive, practical form of building, applicable to every place, invoking every place. Considered in comparison, Le Corbusier's vision, for all of its socio-political rationality, ultimately seems more mythical than Bey's "isle of runaway children", because his method is rooted in design principles rather than Particulars, citizenship rather than human agency.
*Hoping to post a .pdf of the full text soon
**But do not despair! There will always exist holes in such seemingly comprehensive projects as gentrification, urban renewal, civilization, etc. These oases--buildings under construction, abandoned buildings, cryptoforests--which escape overdetermination by neglect or incompletion, have a more 'open' character, and thus provide meaningful play/exploration opportunities.
The word "utopia" comes from the Greek: οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place") and means "no place". The English homophone eutopia, derived from the Greek εὖ ("good" or "well") and τόπος ("place"), means "good place". This, due to the identical pronunciation of "utopia" and "eutopia", gives rise to a double meaning.
Can (e)utopia exist? Is there 'no good place'?
Utopia can be expressed and appreciated only through one's imagination, but it is not reducible to mere escapism or fantasy. Rather, the imaginative function of utopia can enable a more meaningful experience of now, here-- it can amplify the immediacy of our immediate surroundings, influence how we act in and upon them.
One's relationship to a place gives that place meaning; a place has no fixed meaning outside of this relationship. A place can be 'Concord' to one person, 'home' to another. A tree can be shade to one person, firewood to another. One perceives and acts upon a place in relation to their particular impulses and desires, and this interaction brings the place into being. "Knowledge of the world exists effectively only at the moment when I act to transform the world" .
This relationship between perception and action is not causal, but intertwined in the same behavior. One perceives a place by the way they inhabit it, one inhabits a place by the way they perceive it; one experiences a tree as shade by lounging, one lounges to experience a tree as shade. This process is born of imagination, if we consider imagination the active expression of one's desires and impulses.
Utopia does not exist in another dimension, or in a distant future, but lies dormant in our everyday lives. To summon it only requires an ACTIVE imagination. One does not need to travel to find utopia; one can uncover it in one's town, street, frontyard through actively and attentively exploring: building, dwelling, thinking. Utopia exists wherever people express their impulses and desires through their engagement with place. Utopia is the translation of an imaginary 'no place' to an actual 'good place'.
