Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies [PIPS] or as it sometimes stands for, People Interested in Participatory Societies, is a small collective

Collective

A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...

 of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

ists in Providence

Providence, Rhode Island

Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...

, Rhode Island

Rhode Island

The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...

 which promotes artistic and social investigations in psychogeography

Psychogeography

Psychogeography was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for...

.

The group states: "In order to create understanding and transformation of the world

World

World is a common name for the whole of human civilization, specifically human experience, history, or the human condition in general, worldwide, i.e. anywhere on Earth....

 we must create adventures. Society’s emancipation will not be found in the existing structure of the world, but in the cracks and lost spaces. PIPS works to facilitate and create actions and adventures that exercise human potential in new and inventive ways. Our intention is the creation of a better world through community

Community

The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...

 and action."

PIPS grew out of a small group looking to investigate the urban environment

Urbanism

Broadly, urbanism is a focus on cities and urban areas, their geography, economies, politics, social characteristics, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the built environment.-Philosophy:...

 in detail. Since summer of 2001, many socio-spatial experiments have been undertaken against rural, suburban, and urban backdrops. A comprehensive list of their projects can be found on their website, pipsworks.com http://www.pipsworks.com/projects.html.

Major PIPS projects include Provflux, the Urban Agricultural Unit, and Crosswalk:

• Provflux is a weekend-long event dedicated to artistic and social investigations in psychogeography first held in 2003. Part festival and part conference, it brought together visual, performance, and new media artists, along with writers, urban adventurers and the general public (see http://www.pipsworks.com/contact/provflux.html). It is also linked to Psy-Geo-Conflux
  Psy-Geo-Conflux
  Psy-Geo-Conflux is the annual New York City festival dedicated to psychogeography, where visual, performance and sound artists, writers, urban adventurers, researchers and the public gather for four days to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city.Conflux was co-founded by...
  
   a similar event based in New York
  New York
  New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
  
  .

• The Urban Agricultural Unit (UAU) is a mobile greenhouse
  Greenhouse
  A greenhouse is a building in which plants are grown. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings...
  
   designed for educational, artistic, and commercial purposes. Constructed from a discarded shipping container
  Shipping container
  A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes...
  
  , the structure’s innovative design is an example of the adaptive reuse
  Adaptive reuse
  Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than which it was built or designed for. Along with brownfield reclamation, adaptive reuse is seen by many as a key factor in land conservation and the reduction of urban sprawl...
  
   of materials within the constraints of an urban setting. Further details and photographs are here http://www.pipsworks.com/uau.html.

• Crosswalk is a publication dedicated to further investigations of psychogeography, experimental public art
  Public art
  The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...
  
  , critical architectural theory, and all practices in between. All issues are available online by clicking herehttp://www.pipsworks.com/crosswalk.html.

External links

• PIPS Official site.
• http://pipsworks.com/pipsworks.com/crosswalk/prov04.html Crosswalk
• http://pipsworks.com/pipsworks.com/uau.html UAU
• http://www.pipsworks.com pipsworks.com