Intro to creative play Week 6: 2/11/17: Psychogeograhy:

Intro to creative play today would be a more practical session focused on the theme of Psychogeography which was unfamiliar to me but it was a style of mapping which was one of the key elements of story telling in animation the method that starts before the story is even written. This session was also a chance to add more to our sketchbooks in terms of relating to our city projects for this module as we would be doing a walk around the university block and its surroundings which we would later use in a map of the block that described the emotions that we felt when in a  certain area of the block. Psychogeography in general was described to us as the effect of a location based on the emotions and behaviour of the people around it. The person who coined this phrase we learned from the presentation was a man by the name of Guy Deobard (1955).

We later learned in the presentation that the method of Psychogeography was essentially the essence of a story and how it came to be in the first place not just inspired by someone else's work or an interpretation but inspiration coming from the environment itself. A key example of this was in Disney's Cars film which began after its director John Lassiter took a road trip with his family after the success of Toy Story 2 along Route 66 which was one of the main focuses of the story, not just Johns love of cars or by his farther but by the experience of seeing things on route 66 which lead to the story of how rookie Racer Lightning McQueen landed in Radiator springs and learned that theres more in life than just winning a trophy but to care about others and the meaning of the journey itself. This was something I could relate to as one of my own stories The Artist and The Mermaid began with my love of the beaches of my favourite holiday spot Cornwall and doing things that one of the characters Charlie would so such as sketching near the sea (as shown below)

Holiday watercolour painting from Cornwall for story research and experience what Charlie may do on the beach with his sketchbook journal.

We were shown a writer who did this as well for his work and his name was Iain Sinclair, who from what I observed of the video observed the environment around him and what it used to be in its past life how time seems to be moving on that we tend to forget about the past, and the inspiration for his story came from seeing a figure sat on a bench who never even moved from it, the marks of which can be seen in the present day. To him this represented a boat anchoring itself to the shore never moving no matter the change in the tide or what storm may come. This was truly something I could connect to and it seems he even collaborated with people like Effie Paleogou who interrogated London differently to how he saw it picking up on little things such as chewing gum on the floor or even cracks within the stone itself showing decay. One way she did her work was photograph photographs tearing them or even burning the photos to show how London is decaying after all this time as the past moves to the possible future. 

Observational sketch of old style van and decaying warehouse 

Observational sketches.

The point of this was to show how the very activity of Psychogeography was what added colour and texture to the story and how writers like Tolkin used to create the very map of Middle Earth showing the many sights and locations from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogy and books. We would be following a similar principle in our practical exercise when we went out to take photos and sketch out a map showing where we went and how we felt about the location. Despite the cold of the winter breeze we started work heading round the block taking sketches and photos of elements in our locations and as we did we communicated our emotions within. From my observations of elements such as the classic food truck that I saw near the Green House was that the past still exists today despite technology and time moving forward to the future, as well as, the decaying pipes and stone work of the warehouse nearby and I felt that it was an example of how the decay was spreading throughout our world soon causing places or businesses to collapse and fall leaving nothing behind. 

During the walk one thing that I felt especially was my thoughts on the tram system to and from Media city, how it was a chariot to our paths that we carve for ourselves in business or our future careers. However I also felt at times it was a cramping ride as whenever I travel here on the tram its always cramped with no space to manoeuvre with angry people losing their temper, which makes me think about writing a complaint about not having an additional carriage as I felt it would make things much easier for commuters. Annabeth later mentioned this could be a good story idea for my city based animation something that I could take into consideration for later in the project. We all seemed to have a good time doing this task and even gathered in the famous Blue Peter garden which was much smaller than what we see on T.V looking at the fish cage and as we saw the fish we felt like they were like Ariel from Disney's original classic The Little Mermaid, (one of my favourites from my  childhood years) like they wanted to escape and go on land. 

Concealment not to be seen or disturbed by unfriendly eyes. 

We then reconvened in room 3.29 to start work on our Psychogeography maps using our sketches and the notes on our feelings that we had taken from this exercise. We were shown examples of the maps to give us a steer in doing our own and what peeked my interest was that some of them took a more artistic approach and so In my map I decided to do the same. In our maps we could make the landmarks large and communicate our feelings within them or if we wanted to scan them in and introduce the photos on the maps themselves, I may consider this approach later for independent study. We were told that this didn't have to be a work of art that it could be a rough sketching with ink pens or pencils and that we had to make it visual and map the entire route of our journey. 

To aid us we could use google maps to give us ideas in terms of structure and layout. I was rather eager to do an artistic approach and could possibly help improve my understanding of doing maps for AWAH Altrincham. I decided to take a creative approach and do the map in the shape of a studio camera to relate it to Media City itself, so the camera was sketched out in large scale on the A1 sheet and then began roughly sketching out the map route of our exercise journey. 

On this map I decided to expand and include surrounding sites on the map such as the Dockyard bar and the ITV studio since this was a map of Media City it felt only right to include some of its media based sights. On this map I included some sketches of sights such as the old school food van and the concrete blocks from the nearby studio sites to show how one building can emerge from one block of concrete to grow and show its purpose like a flower in bloom. I enlarged some sites on the map such as the concealed bird box which I felt was concealed to prevent the birds and their young from being discovered by unfriendly eyes much like secret gardens or hidden sanctuaries. 

I then began adding my feeling notes on the map and added them like a comic book format in speech bubbles and added colour using highlighter pens and even ink pens, if I had a promarker pen I think I could make this a very colourful master piece something to consider for independent study tonight, as tonights task was to finish our maps and do a blog post about this very topic. When we showed the maps to members of the group, I could tell that others had made theirs rather intricate like a world of fantasy which did make me feel a bit down when I looked back at mine, and although these were not meant to be works of art if we wanted I was still unsure.We were given the option to do it again however I decided to see if I could add colour and salvage this work when I add more to it.

Reflecting back on this task I would say that I enjoyed this task very much and that it gave me some insight and clarity to how experiencing the environment around us and thinking about how it makes us feel could generate a story out of the blue in an instant. If I could do this task again I would possibly do more sketches and possibly think outside the box and look at the littlest thing possible and interpret it on the map just like one of the writers/artists we looked at today as examples for this task. I would also have considered adding more colour to the map or refine the size and scale of the map as I have found in some past map tasks that one of my drawbacks/ weaknesses is to do with scaling and positioning of the maps sites and landmarks. 

In conclusion I would say that I enjoyed this task and that it has given me some ideas for my future city animations on this course and perhaps a new way to look at doing my stories with the method of Psychogeography I may yet put it to use in The Artist and the Mermaid or indeed the Child of light.