Digital Psychogeography

Brief: Design a journey that leads from the inner world to the outer world

Methods: Dérive

Team: Roshni Suri, Slavi Kalferov, Kye Li Chia

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This week my team and I spent most of our time designing and building something that didn’t get presented.

As described by one of our tutors, all members of this week’s group are ‘rational thinkers’; it was evident we were struggling with coming up with ideas that met the brief that were balanced between abstract, real, non-representational but yet still transported you to another place.

Images from the London Power walk with Rosie. Photos by author.

Following the walk through London which introduced us to psychogeography, the idea generation started straight after receiving the brief, which we hadn’t yet fully got our heads around. The initial feedback was to not think about products, and to be realistic about what we wanted to achieve.

Deciding to postpone the idea creation until later, we hoped that our walk around Hackney Marsh would be inspirational. Initially, we were unimpressed with just an extensive muddy field, however starting to relax and embrace the derive found us walking into Middlesex Filter Beds. Previously used to filter cholera out of drinking water, nature has reclaimed the site and now wildlife flourishes.

Compilation of images from our derive. Images by author.

Back in the classroom, idea generation was again slow, not entirely sure how to approach the design. We were advised to define our inner and outer worlds, set some parameters and design the journey between these worlds we found interesting or significant.

Idea generation. Photo credit: Kye Li Chia

Whilst useful advice, which prompted us towards some ideas, in hindsight we weren’t wholly answering the brief, and being representational, with the idea we landed on. Creating a physical, unchoreographed set of connections between emotions and life events would have been a good experience for a different brief, however the first question in feedback to this was “What does this have to do with Hackney Marsh?”.

The tutors probed the walk we had undertaken, and advised us to work with how the derive felt, the memories it brought back, and using this to create the journey.

Our next set of idea generation and making was inspired by Rosie’s comment:

"The marsh is the filter"

We began to create a platform that allowed thoughts and feelings to be filtered through the marsh - the physical form using actual soils and sand that a participant’s mixture of thoughts and feelings would be pulled through, the marsh filtering out the negative.

Development of the filter concept. Photo credits: Slavi Kaloferov, Kye Li Chia, by author

Test run. Video credits: Roshni Suri

The tutors were gentle with the feedback, likely seeing that we were hopelessly lost, however indicating that what we had was not an experience, was entirely representational, and very low fidelity in its current form.

At this point, I think the group and I had exhausted all enthusiasm and energy, spending most of the week confused and continually receiving feedback that was telling us we hadn’t got a viable concept or idea, whilst not actually getting us to a place where we could generate a real experience.

In a last ditch attempt, we decided to abandon anything we had done before, and write a poem about our memories that the marsh brought back. We enacted this in performance of daily life activities which we would break away from to reflect back to nature.

Presentation of the poem. Video credit: Marty Chen.

Having watched other groups’ presentations, I feel that the feedback and direction we received through the week wasn’t as clear as it could have been, and our constant need to bring it back to Hackney Marsh, whereas others had not done this, or they had been more abstract or a little representational caused some frustration, given how much we had struggled all week to do anything.

The relief of just doing anything to get past the presentation, and the following exhaustion caused a knock to my confidence as a designer, and sense of purpose on the course. In reflection, it was a tough week that shouldn’t define my learning and progression, although it may take me some time to bounce back.