This project borrows the title Genius Loci (Spirit of Place) from the psychogeographers of the 20th century. Refined by the Situationists and Guy Debord, the author Merlin Coverly describes it as 'a means of calibrating the behavioural impact of place' and 'the point at which psychology and geography collide'. But what informs us of our everyday sense of place? To the tourist it is the landmarks; a series of visual bullet-points. But to many, these occupy small real-estate both physically and within the consciousness of those who inhabit these urban areas. In reality it is the ephemeral, the banal and the transient that provide a true identity of how we feel about where we live or even travel through. From its roots within 19th century literature, psychogeography has been primarily concerned with the large cities of London and Paris, with casual, unplanned, undirected exploration on foot being used to gather impressions that were fed into literature, art and eventually politics. And of course, photography has become an ideal medium for psychogeographical expression. Genius Loci innovates an updated psychogeographical approach in mapping a small market town in North Wales. Using the same methods as the wanderer in London, or the flâneur in Paris, the project acts on a macro level, but simultaneously has a wider scope. It views the fabric of the urban environment like magnetic tape: Some features remain permanent, others are erased, recorded over and parts remain blank. The margins of the town are also explored where the relentless battle between man and nature is played out and also where nature reclaims neglected spaces. Where people appear, they can also become a temporary part of the fabric of the environment and the psychogeographical narrative. The project provides an unconventional portrait of the town through the psychogeographer's lens. It embraces the spirit of serendipity beloved of the psychogeographers. In this case seeing an old man at the top of a tree, or the bizarre meeting of a rapper shooting a video, for example. Genius Loci considers events and urban spaces as a musical score to people's lives: Background music, modifying and regularly modified, modulating our existence. Often unspectacular, it also provides the 'comfort in the familiar' that we all recognise when we arrive at the places we all call home. When frozen in time and examined through photography, we have the opportunity to examine, question and often appreciate the beauty of the surroundings we take for granted. Ultimately, the Situationists failed in their aspirations to provide scientific value or methodology to their practice and became fragmented through political dogma, ideology and apathy. It never became, or could ever become, a formal science. But through photography we can perhaps continue in the spirit of the psychogeographers, distilling that spirit of place: Genius Loci.