Derive and Psychogeography

Guy Debord and the Situationists were writers, artists and political activists that helped pioneer new ideas in avant-garde artistic practice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Through their interests in mapping, they introduced the concept of derive - an experiential encounter with the landscape based on a kind of real-time response.  The walk you take, for instance, could determine how you respond to it creatively.  Simon Sadler, author of The Situationist City, writes that:

"Maps had traditionally been made by those wishing to impose order upon the city... In their maps, by stark contrast, Debord and Jorn attempted to put the spectator at ease with a city of apparent disorder, exposing the strange logic that lay beneath its surface... the situationist maps described an urban navigational system that operated independently of Paris's dominant patterns of circulation."

It was common for the Situationists to advocate walking through one city using the map of another (similar in some ways to Surrealist games and devices used to reveal unconscious motivations).  The Wikipedia page on derive provides some good background:

Wikipedia - Derive

It's interesting to consider this in the context of Mappr or Wayfaring - how can a map promote an active condition that changes the way we use a space (and doesn't just reflect it?)  Is this something that must happen in the studio, for instance, and not in the real-time mapping process itself?

(Thanks to, and credit for, putting the site comparisons together and for pulling that quote from Simon Sadler must go to the Systeme D blog).