Further reading...

Hey class(es), some projects came to mind during today's lecture.

If you liked the exercise today, you should check out Janet Cardiff. She is a Canadian artist from Ontario currently living in Alberta (I think). She has done a bunch of great audio / film works, inculding many walking tours, and the amazing Paradise Institue (excellent user experience design).

On the more literary/theoretical side, Walter Benjamin explored the idea of the flaneur and wrote extensively about the city and its psychogeography (though I don't think he used that term). His major work was the Arcades Project.

Also in the vein of urban exploration is Infiltration, a zine and website 'about going places you're not supposed to go'. My personal favourites: subway tunnels, the sheraton hotel sub-basement.

We talked a bit about mapping today, and we will get more into that later, but there's a great book about mapping as a conceptual practice called Else/Where: Mapping — New Cartographies of Networks and Territories (terse, I know). It talks a lot about mapping of various things (conversations, networks etc) and about visualization as a design tool. Available on amazon.ca but not, sadly, in the library. I will bring it in next week.