Cityscapes — initiated by Myron Turner — offers a common ground where people can share their experiences of the places where they live and have lived, or have visited. Or places they’ve imagined, read about, hope or have hoped to visit. In other words, Cityscapes is not only the reflection of physical space but of a shared imaginative space.

Its theoretical basis lies in ideas of locative art and pyschogeography. The camera and descriptive text are its locative technologies, and the pyschogeography consists of the spaces we inhabit as a global community. Continue reading

[Image: Operation Urban Terrain (OUT): 2004-6 by Anne Marie Schleiner] “Due to its marginal existence in relation to the oppressive reality of work, play is often regarded as fictitious. But the work of the Situationists is precisely the preparation of ludic possibilities to come.” Guy Debord (Contribution to Situationist Definition of Play, Internationale Situationniste #1, June 1958)

In recent years, commentators on game culture and ludology have undertaken the task of analyzing and structuring play. Such work has been strongly influenced by the Dutch researcher Johan Huizinga’s 1938 study of play, Homo Ludens and Roger Callois’s later structuralist elaborations of Huizinga’s research. Continue reading

Turbulence Commission: Imaging Beijing by John (Craig) Freeman [Part of the Mixed Realities exhibition, on view until April 15, 2008] - Imaging Beijing is the latest installment of Imaging Place, a place-based, virtual reality project that combines panoramic photography, digital video, and virtual worlds to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. When a denizen of Second Life first arrives at Imaging Beijing, he, she or it can walk over a satellite image of central Beijing where they will find a networks of nodes constructed of primitive spherical geometry with panoramic photographs texture mapped to the interior. Continue reading

Robert Ladislas Derr will perform Chance: Fairfax, a psychogeographical walk performance through the streets of Fairfax on March 28, 2008, starting in front of City Hall, 10455 Armstrong Street at 11:00 am. On April 4, his performance will start in front of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), 230 The Fenway, Boston.

During The Fifth Annual Visual Cultures Symposium at George Mason University’s Johnson Center Cinema on March 27, the viewers will determine the direction of his walk performance (wearing four video cameras harnessed to his person) through the streets based upon the roll of a dice; the dice indicates that he move forward, backward, right, left, spin, or stand in place. He will accept thirty dice rolls then proceed on his walk accordingly. When spin or stand in place are the command, he will complete each for one minute. Continue reading

DRAIN - CALL FOR ENTRIES: In 1955, Guy Debord described psychogeography as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” Debord’s psychogeographical map The Naked City (1957) challenged traditional ideas of mapping relating to scale, location, and fixity, and drew on the work of urban social geographer Paul-Henri Chombart de Lauwe’s concept of the city as a conglomeration of distinct quarters, each with its own special function, class divisions, and “physiognomy,” which linked the idea of the urban plan to the body. An important strategy of the pyschogeographical was the dérive, “a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences”. Continue reading

Call For Artists: Contemporary Flânerie: Reconfiguring Cities :: Deadline: March 31, 2008.

In Modernity, the Flaneur, while strolling around his streets, participated in the depiction of the changing city, playing a simultaneously active and detached role. The Flaneur and his city maintained a symbiotic relationship, where one helped (re) define the other. In view of current trends in globalization, immigration and technology (i.e., Web 2.0), one’s positioning to one location is more fluid than ever before. Continue reading

The Space Between: Bas Jan Ader - Latifa Echakhch - Maria Lindberg - Adrian Piper - Mark Raidpere - Gabriela Vanga :: March 16 - June 1, 2008 :: Opening: March 15, 2008; 2 pm :: Museum Anna Nordlander, Nordanå, Skellefteå, Sweden :: Curated by Mats Stjernstedt.

The exhibition The Space Between addresses certain dynamics where simple gestures suggest an alteration and a politicization of temporal and spatial conditions inherent in the work and between the artwork and the viewer. This is manifested both in the content and in the formal structure of the work. The artworks presented involve aspects including the politics of identity and language reinterpreted in concepts such as dimension and distance, spatial transformation and temporal shifts – but also psychological distances in the form of flights of fancy, changes in mentality and reverie. Continue reading

“One morning a year ago, author Will Self sucked the life out of a cigarette and - careful not to wake the children - crept down the stairs in his house. Then he plunged out into the gloaming to begin his long walk from London to Manhattan … The author has become one of the leading - and one of the few - practitioners of a science called psychogeography … Self has revived the science and put his own stamp on it. He espouses walks from Point A to a ridiculously distant Point B as a method of reclaiming the in-between landscapes, and of hurtling himself into a pre-industrial sense of time.” From Interview with Will Self by Pagan Kennedy, Boston Globe. Continue reading

Pedestrian Service Exquisite: A Day of Encountered Experience at the Transmodern Festival ‘08 :: April 3- 6, 2008 :: Submission Deadline: January 7, 2008.

We are seeking projects to be included in a walking tour of a small area of Baltimore. Pedestrian Service Exquisite is a day of encountered performances, interventions, site specific installations, mini tours, and surreal moments. The tour will explore the immediate area surrounding Baltimore’s Load of Fun. Please consult our map of the area before sending in a submission. Please note that there is no available gallery space for this show. Continue reading

John Craig Freeman :: Digital Media Lecture Series :: November 20, 2007; 7:00 pm :: The RISD Auditorium, North Main St. (at College), Providence, RI.

Artist and educator John Craig Freeman uses digital technologies to produce place-based virtual reality installations made up of projected interactive environments that lead the audience from global satellite images to immersive, user navigated scenes on the ground. Continue reading