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I like Photoshop, but it's expensive. Never tried Flash, I oughta dig around for a torrent...>.>

I have never in my life met anyone who has paid for their Photoshop.

That's an interesting idea. I suppose, though, that it can be improved maybe. I mean, if these are covered in graffiti, there are people who are actively drawing graffiti there, probably. You can slightly modify the existing graffiti turning existing lines into premade sigils or something, and that would synthesize the existing culture of the thing with the sigil intent -- a magick detournment.

Also, the sigil in my avatar is hooked into a gnostic amp network. If you like, you can hook into that; the net could always use some more input.

Well I haven't found any that are actually covered in graff, which is surprising.

didnt BIP have a comic we needed a slave for?

Don't worry, that's in progress. I'm told that we officially have Page 1 completed. Except for a title.

I'll put pretty much all of my sketch stuff up here for everyone to use, since I don't plan on making money off 'em. But I can no longer afford to take on any major project that isn't going to support me somehow. Best of luck to you folks. I look forward to peeping it.

I guess the abandoned bus shelters are kind of a free zone, huh? Theoretically city-owned but not kept up, kind of like how the billboards in NYC were legally unprotected yet still physically there after they got outlawed. They could probably be modded greatly, since they are both public and highly unregulated -- you'd have a kind of seperate memetic culture in each, which might make for good experimental matter for memebomb research since at ghost busstops far apart you might have more or less unconnected yet thriving graffiti cultures -- put a memebomb in one and see how long it takes for something similar to be spread to another nearby. That might be a better way to draw a line -- it represents a network of communication within PDX rather than a straight line that a bus would be likely to take.

My original idea with the ghost bus stops was about trying to hijack a line of energy flow to suit my purposes. There were a few ways I thought of doing this. The first and easiest would be to find an abandoned route. If really lucky, there would still be stop posts and benches. Through a series of sigils, shrines and meditating at these places, I could wake it back up again. Another option would be to not graffiti them, and try to fix them up to look as much like real bus stops as possible, to feed off of anyone who would stop there and wait for a bus that would never come.

The other, less feasible idea, would be to make my own. If I had the resources to erect posts that would make people think it was a bus stop, I could create my own fictional bus route in order to syphon energy from a thriving area and redirect it somewhere that needed a bit of love and care. With this though, I'd more likely create equidistant shrines where these stops would, because I seriously doubt I'd be able to infiltrate public transportation to gank the elements I need to make a believable bus stop.

[OF COURSE THERE WILL]

I demand that there be a card for a friendly stray cat 

OF COURSE THERE WILL 

Wow.


You're really good.  Reminds me a bit of Dan Clowes.

Clowes? Hmm... that's definitely the first time someone's made that comparison. Thnx.

Shuffling instructions would differ from a Derive in one particular element: a derive should always show the actual psychogeography of a place in a semi-repeatable way, since presumably you are being drawn and repelled in predictable ways by semi-permanent features. However, I still think it's a neat idea.

Your phrasing of it as a tarot deck flashed on me an interesting idea, though. You could use it similarly to bibliomancy, couldn't you? Assign importance to the sights seen on the trip or to wherever you end up -- use it as a form of dowsing or assign to it the signficance of being a mirror of a macrocosm (so it's like scrying -- the story of your small trip is a microcosm of some greater story at some time in the past or future).

The other bit (I may be delving off-topic here and jacking a bit) is that this method will actually make some kind of geometric pattern. Imagine doing this prior to the trip, with the aid of a map, and drawing out the route based on this. It would be like a sigil representing the trip, and the same series of instructions would have a different form for every locale since real geographic places have irregularities not found on a blank grid or tabula rasa.

I was thinking of what this deck would entail, and I like the idea of using urban images rather than any text. A bit more abstract, but something I could keep in the palm of my hand, charging as I walk. Pulling a card, it may look like a light pole with all of it's wires moving to the right. And so on. If the imagery is handled correctly, you could utilize it to divine from the actual landscape in front of you.

The sigil idea is interesting, though I think I'd personally want to do it in reverse of what you said. As in, start the derive with no direction in mind, and draw lines on the map wherever you go. I'd keep a pocketful of stickers or a stencil or magnum marker handy to decorate my path, drawing the sigil on the city. When the Derive is done, the sigil is done. And I've drawn it without knowing what it even looks like.

For anybody interested, The Philoctetes Center held one of their round table discussions on the topic. Psychogeography: The Landscapes of Memory:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vSbsSh3CoA

Ah Philoctetes... I can't imagine watching these, but listening while drawing or otherwise craft making is happykittybunnypony.

Dérive tarot deck? what's that?

no but I just got the impression they just prepared a stack of index cards with short instructions, and shuffled those.

And I'm just the sort of aesthetic nerd to gank that idea for my own purposes, making something similar for myself... but prettier. 

honey, I'll add that to the memebomb list if you dont mind

It's a funny thing, I read about psychogeography first on the Generative Art mailinglist, but the project explained there was obviously just a small aspect or part of psychogeography. it was about people playing a game with cards that had directions on then "second road on the right", "third left","look for a traffic light", etc. you'd shuffle the cards and take a semi-random walk. (the art piece was how they documented their trips afaik, but generative art is more about the process than the result, hence the name.)

Huh... that sounds like some sort of Dérive tarot deck. That's kind of interesting, and it makes me want to make my own.

I think some places are metaphorically alive which, at times, seems to me, as if they are literally alive, that is, you can feel them.

I started to take a look at that book, Passages: Explorations of the Contemporary City by Graham Livesey, just the beginning.

So far I like what Michel de Certeau wrote, "space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it & make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities."

Or as he put it more simply, "Space is a practiced place." 

Most definitely. Space undergoes experience in a similar way to us. The elements that define that space almost feel like food passing through it's system. As thing s pass through it, bits are left making it part of the space.  Some nourishing, some laced with fat and chemicals that give it indigestion. There was an art instillation here in Portland last year, funded in part by the city, that attempted to map Portland as a human body to contemplate applying acupuncture to its downtrodden areas. The show actually wasn't all that great, but it has a great kernel of an idea to elaborate on. I've played with a number of projects that attempt to invigorate space. The most fun is building public altars, street shrines left in key places built, painted, and covered in venerated found objects. Damn if I don't have many pictures of them...

In case you didn't already find it, Passages is available on Google Books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=icf0msfWi-UC&dq=Passages:+Explorations+of+the+Contemporary+City+by+Graham+Livesey&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=R5xGqqr-2g&sig=ja6zdcPmMGRZHR99mVvpPFGR7-s&hl=en&ei=FEQBSrnOOprqtQPR3sH8BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

I also remembered another book called How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built by Stewart Brand, which I like a lot. In fact, when looking it up for this post, I found that the BBC let him make a 3 hour documentary on it, and it's in six parts on Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8639555925486210852

I know what I'm watching tonight. =^.^=

I like it too. I was just thinking about memetic geography yesterday telling Dalekk about sniffing out "good spots" for posters.

I do the same with stickers and stencils. I like the feeling of walking around for a long enough period of time that I'll start to get impulses to place them in certain areas, like they're sweet spots that get noticed by the most amount of passers by. Not that there's much I can do to test how successful these placements are. It feels more like I'm reciprocating the affect I get when I'm outside and stumble upon some little patch of creativity that some one put there for me to see. There's an unspoken dialogue going all the time with graffiti, and it's fun watching a patch of wall grow as it attracts more and more of it after I've put something there. It feels similar to smoking at a party. Everyone's around in a circle, and one person pulls a cigarette out of their pack only to have everyone else follow suit.

Psychogeography is a notion that is near and dear to my heart, but it's kind of an elusive term, with varying definitions. What started as mostly the poetic drunken ramblings within Situationism, has ballooned into many things. And it has a strong resonance with me that I sometimes can't define as well as I'd like to. But the core concept revolves around the idea of environment being more [alive/aware/conscious] than is taken at face value. Ideas of the Dérive, where one takes a walk with no particular aim, trusting that the city will "tell you" where to turn and where not to. Trusting that it will take you somewhere that will impress upon the memory, somewhere beautiful and meaningful. Ideas of areas of land or neighborhoods that develop distinct "personalities", like an individual that grows and changes from the experience of the elements living and traveling through it's system. And that every element is part of the whole. That our environment interacts and changes the elements within it(i.e. us), as much as those elements change the environment. I equate it a lot with some core principles of Shinto. Their usage of Torri Gates to create a boundary line between divine and profane spaces... building temples to venerate a patch of forest, thinking it must be inhabited by the gods just because it is particularly beautiful to them.

Do I think places are literally alive? Probably not. Do I think it's a romantic notion? OF COURSE. Do I find this way of thinking to be a more accurate map to describe the territory? For me, certainly. I guess I'm posting just to start the back and forth on the topic, since I found nothing in a search. I'm wondering if there are other, completely different outlooks on this barely defined term. And in general, what others think on the subject. Recommendations for reading/watching/etc. would be muchly liked[one of my favorites being Passages: Explorations of the Contemporary City by Graham Livesey].

Accelerado by Charles Stross, and Jingo by Pratchett. It's been awhile since I've read a novel... enjoying.

I still haven't finished reading Finnegans Wake & maybe never will.  I like his short stories too.  Araby is one of my favorites.

Neither have I. I've gotten close, but rereading it is so much like reading an entirely different book that finishing it almost seems irrelevant. Also, I like to hold off until I can find someone to read it with, taking turns reading it aloud. It's a whole different experience.