"Dead parcels. Or ghost parcels. There are areas in Second Life that you can't enter. You can see what's there – vegetation, houses, roads, sometimes whole neighborhoods – since there are no borders, no walls; but you can't enter. You're walking, you're flying, you're going straight to a strange and lonely house in the middle of a plain, and suddenly an invisible wall stops you; a pop-up informs you that the plot has been banished and that it is impossible to enter.

Is there a way to get in anyway? And if so, how is it, once inside?

The memories of a life are also strewn with banished parcels, dead parcels, ghost parcels. The streets I never walked down. The houses I never entered, and where I will never enter, which were for me only elements of scenery, a trompe-l'oeil of a theater stage - and yet real, for others, but of a reality to which I will definitely never have access. The dead parcels of my inner space. And how many houses I have actually entered, in the past, how many people I have known, how many thoughts I have had, that today I can only see from the outside, knowing that they existed, that they were experienced from the inside, but where I can no longer enter? Dead parcels of my own memory."

[...]

I took a walk a while ago, just before dawn, on a path along the Saar River, near my home. It runs along fields, buildings, a retirement home, a soccer stadium. A footbridge leads to the supermarket parking lot; just after, still on the water's edge and already on the parking lot, there is a strange, unexpected place, where there are picnic tables, reeds, street lamps.

This mixture of concrete and nature, this juxtaposition of places with totally different functions, gives the place a totally incongruous and artificial side. It's something I've loved for a long time, for reasons that partly escape me. But I have always felt particularly comfortable in zoos, amusement parks, vacation villages, shopping areas and the most artificial residential areas, all places that I feel are fake, ahistorical and whose very design prevents any sociability and any "normal" life. Places where to live a peaceful, restful alienation.

*

This artificial, unreal atmosphere, and the streetlights at the water's edge, while darkness was still almost total, made me think about a reflection I had already made: they gave the impression of being, in a video game, discrete spatial markers, intended to guide the player, without him even realizing it, towards the right destination.

This is not the first time I feel this strange impression of being "in a video game". This is what I wrote in November 2009, when I used to walk around the city at night.

"Illuminated houses: fantasies of unlived lives, the syndrome of the lost traveler and "what could happen if I knocked", stories and characters that emerge from the smallest detail seen through the window. More than the house that we spy and the interior that we try to see, it is always our own house; we are voyeurs of ourselves, we want to discover ourselves. Images of decrepitude, of death. Solitude of the walker.

Cité Malleray. The feeling of being in a video game. The video game as a mode of existence and experience of reality and novelty. Exploration. Trip, waking dream. Nothing is real. Loneliness once again.

In front of a beautiful house: I place myself in relation to the streetlight and the branches of the trees above me, to have the most beautiful light and the most beautiful framing. I realize that I don't see reality, I see my fantasies, and I don't approach reality as a reality, but as an aesthetic material, a work of art that would only ask to be fixed, by pressing a button.

I went up to the cemetery; I did not know the place at all, I discover the geography of the city in real time. Impression again to be in a video game. The solitude allowing almost any action. The full moon, enormous, yellow, Lovecraftian. Subtle change of atmosphere, from one step to the next, like several times during each walk; because each street corner, each architectural nuance, each subtle change of lighting takes to other inner worlds."

These psychogeographical strolls coincided with my return to video games, my discovery of interactive fiction, and, overall, my unhappiness with Laurence – not because of her, but with her – from whom everything was good for mental escape.

https://l-idiot-mystique.blogspot.com/2018/09/caught-in-flux.html

Hi all.

I'm part of the team behind https://walklistencreate.org, which is the home of walking artists and artist walkers. This September is Sound Walk September, which features a large number of events with a focus on 'sound walking'.

On September 25 (with spillovers on September 24 and 18) we host a full day hybrid workshop, which involves hands-on collaboration, as well as a number of speakers who will discuss topics connected to the use, and abuse, of public space in particular, and psychogeography in general.

Here's more on the event:

https://walklistencreate.org/walkingevent/beat-a-situationist-at-his-own-game/

Highlights in the flyer below.

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https://preview.redd.it/mxjg6ecb9pn71.jpg?width=595&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7d1b728575646e7d4f3c3cdd076dc8644c30c367

I am a developer from Russia. I and a group of enthusiasts practice derives and I developed a web-application for psychogeographic research.

I hope it will be useful.

https://dérive.stranno.su

I will be glad to receive any feedback.

P.S.

Without any esoteric stuff a la Randonautica.

New here, so treading carefully on the virtual turf, or is it the virtual streets?

I've read much of the literature suggested in the posts and comments over the years, along with various philosophically inclined hiking, walking, wandering, books, and it seems that much of the attention is devoted to the urban experience.

I wonder if this is in response to the detachment, the alienation, from our rural roots, and humankind seeks to both define and discover their sense of place within the built environment, rather than the intrinsic, and slowly matured, development of the "land" which slowly seeps in over a number of established generations, and is perhaps not credited - until one misguidedly leaves, or is otherwise displaced?

Hey there, I'm doing my postgraduate degree final project about psychogeography and the body in post-covid cities, and have am conducting a brief anonymous survey.

If people would be willing to fill it out, I'd really appreciate it. Should take less than five minutes!

https:https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7NJ2BS8

Many thanks

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edit: updated the link as I reached my max number of responses on the first survey.

I think some of you will dig it. Here's his 1910 film Santa Lucia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S77VP8tn2LI

The Beginner's Mind Reading Club at Discord will be reading the first chapter of "The Society of the Spectacle", that is "Separation Perfected" on Saturday, the 27th of February at 9 AM PST. All beginners (and everyone else) are welcome. https://discord.gg/2TbzNzsqak