New Psychogeographic App Helps You To Get Lost

There is no excuse for being bored in the 21st century. With the increasing sedentary and plugged in lifestyle, people are always in need of new ways to get out and explore. Drift is a psychogegraphic phone app that does encourages people to do exactly that — its motto is “get lost in familiar spaces.”

The phone app essentially functions as a scavenger hunt and provides a list of tasks for users to complete. They range in difficulty and are based on cardinal directions (“Walk north and find something green”), but it’s entirely up to the explorer how to navigate the surroundings. Drift is designed to prompt people to get out and explore — there’s no wrong way to go. Every photo is geotagged and added to an online gallery of what people have discovered while drifting.

Drift also introduces using language as a tool of understanding the city, a huge part of psychogeography. Each clue is meant to be broadly interpreted and naturally people translate what they see in different ways. The clues are generic — “an example of change”, “a number” — but the conversations that can evolve out of what is the best photo to take or whether something is relevant to the clue are part of the joy of seriously thinking about space.

Go get lost!