DÉRIVE
Web-application for psychogeographic research
This small application in no way claims to be a disclosure of such a concept as "drift" ("dérive"), but rather a small collection of methods and a source of external independent force that guides your traffic regardless of your subjective ideas about specific parts of the city (area). The supreme task is disorientation in your own city.
There are two types of drift — algorithmic and cartographic. The first one represents a randomly set sequence of commands, the second one draws on the map again and again a distant point to arrive at.
It is hardly possible to create a sequence of actions that is universally suitable for any turn of the urban landscape and all possible force majeure. Therefore, it will not be critical sometimes to interpret the tasks a little more freely. After all, although the machine here dictates the rules, the task of interpreting them lies on the person.
- Detailed
- Normal
- Minimal
By psychogeography is understood the study of the influence of the territorial environment, most often urban, on the behavior, emotions and feelings of a person, as well as the study of unfamiliar territories within the urban space.
When a person goes out into the street, he or she always has a specific motive that guides him or her. If there is no motive, the person may never visit different parts of the city for lack of need. Within the limits of modern perception, freedom is practiced as a closed circle in which a person turns: every day, in the same way, a person moves from apartment to office, auditorium or to another apartment and then comes back. He usually does not realize that he can leave the house and go in any directions. Thus, wherever the person goes, the street appears to be a tunnel between two rooms, which is desirable to overcome as soon as possible.
If street activity (graffiti, street art and other practices) is a direct transformation of the street, then psychogeography is a change in its perception by a concrete subject.
The main technique of research is drifting (dérive) — unmotivated movement in the city, in which a person perceives the familiar and boring area again. But can an individual act in a truly unmotivated way? Situationists have seen drift as a non-mediated study of urban landscapes that is guided by the aesthetic impulses and desires of the individual subject. But aren't these "aesthetic impulses and desires of the individual subject" another, no less constraining force along with the utilitarian movement from point A to point B, from which the Situationists tried to get rid?
Both variants of drift implemented here are programs, which in relation to a human being are an external independent force. Thus, their subjectivity is transferred to a program.
* You can install this site as a native application by clicking on the icon 
in Safari or 
in Chrome, and then Add to Home Screen (Add to homescreen).
** Development and design — Max Alyokhin. The first version was released in June 2017, updated and extended in May 2020.