Detournement, Drifting & Resistance

A British comedian recently offered the throwaway gag that when she used her GPS she found herself ‘gaming the road’.

Here is Veronesi on fighting back:

To amuse ourselves, Claudia and I played ‘What a pity!’ with the GPS. We had put in the school address as the destination then we’d systematically disobeyed the orders given by the female voice (cold, peremptory and pretty unsympathetic) that told us the shortest route. ‘Turn to the right NOW!’ said the voice. But I replied, ‘What a pity! That doesn’t suit,’ and I kept straight on. The GPS got confused. It started recalculating the route and Claudia laughed. Then once it had got things sorted out the female voice began again: ‘After 100 yards turn left.’ And I replied, ‘What a pity! That could be tricky.’ The voice was insistent: ‘Turn left NOW!’ And it was Claudia, whilst I turned instead to the right, who told the GPS, ‘What a pity! We’ve gone right.’
(Sandro Veronesi: Caos calmo)

Active Passivity II

Very simply I mean that we are the objects of messages and treatments that we must absolutely be aware of and learn about. The images ‘addressed’ to us ‘preform’ us, giving culture an appearance of naturalness that we must be vigilant about. Distance and observation are permanent necessities.

(Marc Augé, in interview)

The Metropolis

If during the touch down at Trude I hadn’t read the name of the city written in nice big letters I would have thought that I’d arrived at the very same airport from which I’d taken off. The suburbs they made me cross were no different from those other ones: the same houses, yellowish and slightly green. I followed the same arrows, I drove round the same flowerbeds in the very same piazzas. On display in the streets in the centre were goods, packages, signs that didn’t change, not even slightly. This was the first time I had come to Trude, but already I knew the hotel in which I happened to be staying; I’d already gone through my dialogue with the ironmongers; other days, exactly the same as this one, had ended with me looking through the same tumblers at the very same undulating navels.

Why come here to Trude? I asked myself. And already I wanted to leave.

You can resume your flight whenever you please, they told me. But you’ll arrive at another Trude, exactly similar to this one in all its particulars. The world has been covered over by a single Trude that neither starts nor stops. The name that’s shown at the airport is the only thing that will change.

(Italo Calvino: Trude, from Le città invisibili)