Lost London

Psychogeography: a beginner's guide. Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour: film, photography, manuscript, tape. Catch the textual run-off of the streets; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation. Cut for sign. Log the data-stream. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblance, the changing moods of the street. Complete the circle, and the record ends. Walking makes for content; footage for footage. [1]

About the Project:

Lost London is an exploration into pervasive gaming and urban space, focusing on the forgotten places and networks that exist within the city of London.

The piece invites participants to question their routine journeys and examine their surroundings, the starting point being disused tube stations. They are encouraged to explore subtleties in their environment and to document what they find, building up a new perception of the city. From this exploration, participants are invited to feedback and share their observations and discoveries based on their new awareness.

The game is based on psychogeography, a term first used by the Lettrist Group (of which the theorist Guy Debord was part of) in the 1950's. Debord defines it as:

' The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.' [2]

My interest in creating a game based on psychogeography was partly influenced by a small project which I was assigned on my MA during the Autumn tern called 'Aimlessness'. 

The idea was to travel between two London Underground stations and document the journey in any way we wanted. The idea of making it an aimless journey, and doing so in the context of being a set task,  was so that we would carry it out whilst not being distracted by other things. The point was to walk arond the city and notice it's geography, it's control systems, and what interested us (this comes from emotions). I liked the idea of linking this with my interest in disused tube stations, as by making them a starting point, the participant is already having to open their eyes a bit more, and notice that which is normally not obvious.

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[1] Macfarlane, Robert. 'A Road of One's Own', Times Literary Supplement, October 07, 2005.
[2] Debord, Guy. ‘Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’, Situationalist International Anthology. Ed. Ken Knabb, 1981, p5.