When one goes on a derive, one is supposed to free oneself from “their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” This freedom of derivé sounds like providing less restriction for one’s movement in a city. I had never had a chance to derivéd until I teamed up with Melissa to do our locative media homework—deriving from Niagara Square and mapping our walk. Melissa and I set out separately on a direction given by flipping a pencil. I didn’t learn how hard it is to derive until I really did it.
To make it derivé, I decided to let my movement determined by a flip of a coin, the random signal of the traffic light or some random attraction appearing on the street. One thing I need to mention is that both Melissa and I derive with our cell phone on. Cell phone is a very important of our everyday life social networking. If we took our cell phone with us, did that mean we were not able to free ourselves from our social relation and failed to do a derive? However, at the same time, the use of cell phone has been so deep in our everyday life that it almost becomes part of our body. Can one derive without a cell phone? Melissa and I decided to take the chance to make the use of cell phone as part of our derive—a modern derive with cell phone technology. In our project, we used cell phone as a way to create “chance”: when we walk on a street and happen to pick up an unpredictable phone call, we might try to focus and take the chance to stop and talk. This stop would provide a chance for us to look around our surrounding and notice some landmarks. So Melissa and I would call each other randomly on our derive. When we picked up the phone, we would look around and take a picture of one thing that attracts our eyes as the landmarks on our map.
The creation of chance in different circumstances is an interesting of our assignment. As I went on a derive, I find it hard to define something as an absolute chance. I am still the one who decides what is chance and whether I should take this chance or that chance. Debord proposes that chance play less an important part in a derivé, since chance can only in a limited number of variants provided by the city space and human behavior and thinking. When I was at a crossroad, I only had four choices: left, right, forward, and backward. Or I could create some other chances—climbing up to the roof of a building and derieve there. On a derive, even though I was not supposed to have a strong purpose or structure for my mapping, the way I looked around the city was still the way I usually did it. I didn’t like to look at the names of buildings but simply pay attention to their appearance. If I found something look interesting, I would try to identify what the building is. I tried to resist this habit by letting the cell phone chance decide when I should really look. But I still chose the spot to take a picture. It was interesting that, when I tried not to let my own aesthetic choice play a role in the photo taking and simply took a picture on the thing that drew my attention the most, I often ended up taking a picture of an advertisement board. I derive into the commercial space of the city.
It was very windy when I went on derive. I don’t really understand why Debord would prefer storm as the weather for derive.
