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It has been suggested that walking is itself an aesthetic and creative practice. Discuss.
Passing Truth. The idea in motion.
In this paper I want to find a ratio for the inspiration derived from being on the move. A saying
from Bedouin times states ‘the soul travels at a walking pace’. Retracing this notion, we pass
alongside creative folks that share my fancy. They treat it in ways of giving context, adding details
of a more tangible matter. Further there are those who take the journey as its own reward. I will
approach some views in factual science to make my point. The relation of man and his habitat is
volatile. Reasons to turn oneself in to inner space can both emphasize and cancel out our urge to
explore. Yet one can’t get around making the paces, it is essential to our wellbeing. The movement
across outer and inner scenery correlates easily.
Walking is important to me. It helps to clear out the mind; it is good to find out what is around in
there at all. There are times where I just have to walk, lest the congestion curbs the more liberal
parts of my being. The appeal is acting the way dreaming is supposed to work. There is an intuition
of sorts how and when to start off, and which way to take. Like with music, it is best when the way
compliments the purpose, whether consciously or not.
Large parts of this our first modern metropolis do not treat a sense of exploration kindly. Whether
cooped up in a square mile office or a domicile around the town’s exurbs, walking can turn into
running the gauntlet – down identical high streets, made out to be functional, assaulted by the
debris of chain venues and visual pollution – and one can end up feeling inconvenienced and
displaced. How we can turn this around to our advantage is a concern of contemporary visual
information. The classical association of ‘a walk’ in the quaint, green countryside, with pretty
views is not mandatory. It only takes a context to come together.
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Here again, the protagonists of ‘the journey as the destination’ can change the game, by unravelling
the history of a place, adding their own marks of involvement and attention. The urban non-entity
can become a canvas for how we decode and process these markers. There are layers of meaning
available from guided walks, literature, the cityscape itself. It is a challenge to each of us to find our
own vantage point, in terms of how we use the terrain. Ways can be taken that are made out not to
be. Places that are lost to our view beyond an overgrowth of the now hold their lasting charm in the
oblique. The transgressions to reach them can be a response to the lack of something, rather than a
laid out, intended focus on a certain outcome.
One set of factors that makes walking a rewarding experience is conveyed by the humanities as
neophilia. The ‘love for the new’ is a set of incentive and reward mechanisms that help make us as
successful and versatile as no other animal. Rather than considering factors out of our known range
as sinister, we consider them, carefully. A certain proportion (estimated at 15%) of mankind
actively seeks to be out there, seemingly just for kicks, regardless of the dangers this implies. The
same rate, on the other hand, prefers to keep it more safe.
The term neophilia itself was coined by R. A. Wilson, a neopagan author inspired by 70s
counterculture. Wilson described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations,
to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one
model elevated to the truth."1 This spirit, as he detailed it, is stereotypically being upheld by
hipsters, hackers and sci-fi aficionados today. Their causes are more a travel of the mind.
But they do pick out white spots on corners of the map of curiosity. The outcome is made tangible
again, in the shape of technical innovations, political and social change. And it perpetually feeds
back into the cycle of our applied fantasy. On a more pedestrian level we can consider the walk as
allusion to the expedition, little discoveries on the way down the road as primers to perceive
anything out of the ordinary closer. “Neophilia can be a facilitator of serendipity, which can in turn
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be the gateway to discovery and creativity. The three affective foundations underpinning neophilia
– surprise, curiosity, and interest – are referred to as ‘knowledge emotions’ because they resemble
thoughts in how they spur us to learn.”2
The effects of this chemical cycle saved our species from extinction 80 thousand years ago, when
conditions across the African plains changed in unforeseen ways. Retrieved climate data offers no
means to evade extinction but adapting nimbly to strange terrain and food sources on generation
long, erratic wanderings into the unknown. Many closely related species were marginalized and
eventually went extinct, Homo sapiens walked away from it. Animals tend to migrate across fixed
cycles of suitable terrain – man prepares for the unforeseen, pursues the lucky strike and perseveres
seemingly impossible stretches to break out of the loop.
This mode of contestation is more than an evolutional flight of fancy, rather an essential mode
of development. As such, it became deeply enmeshed in common lore and verbal history. All
cultures have their tales of the ‘whence and where to’ of their mythical ancestors. The griots,
bards in early Africa, were traversing the continent all their life, singing of current affairs, spinning
yarn of way more remote places than they ever could have seen. “Though [the griot] has to know
many traditional songs without error, he must also have the ability to extemporize on current
events, chance incidents and the passing scene. His wit can be devastating and his knowledge of
local history formidable”3
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Aborigine spiritism lets certain people find ways across the plains by following animal spirits and
their features in the land, revealed in dreams. They transpose their findings into music and drawings
and restrict access through encoding these. Proofing the fate of their kin they set out for rambles
across these mirage bands, meeting narrators at the fringe of their tale to see the whole picture.4
Pre-dominion tribes had groups of their finest venture out on a whim, to become part of a story.
Caravans, seafarers and spacemen longed for what lies beyond the known realm. From the Greek
legends, to fairy tales and modern screenplays – if it grabs our attention, there is probably the
remote and unknown involved. And where the known story ends there will rarely be any sober,
humble admission of inadequate means. Here be lions, and he who dares wins. There was no way
to pull through but improvise, finding new rules as one went.
The ways that Francis Alÿs takes with his wandering performances is similarly playful in its
treatment of temporal reality. His paseo is a stroll through our neighbourhood, carrying a paint
bucket that leaks or ‘walking’ a magnetic dog, pushing a block of ice through the streets. What
more sense could that make than leaving breadcrumbs in the forest? And in the dis-located place
where he reveals the whole picture, and as it is made understood in context, the event has passed.
Vestiges he leaves behind to the spectator are deprecated until then, can’t be traced back to the
place they occurred in as the evidence suggests. But this paradox is part of the plot. It is only
through this being a rehash that the building of a myth stratifies. And only at the tertiary stage of
remoteness, the published work that makes it perennial, does his concept add up all the elements it
intends to. “.. a testament to, and document of, Alÿs’s use of fiction and story, it also utilizes a
fragmentary structure to model the ways in which pieces of an artistic project travel through time
(..) the artist himself makes stories and meaning out of a variety of fragmentary influences.”5
Thus it can only be ours what we go through with these pieces.
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The choice of subject one makes is tangibly private and contextual. Even the optical mixing of
colours occurs in the eye of the viewer. At the end of the 18th century photography eroded the
rigidity this required in academical styles. When the Impressionists learned to come to terms with
their freedom, they took to the streets. Baudelaire, who enjoyed the company of Manet, Degas and
their circles, described the flâneur as a hedonist of fleeting passion. Not being compacted into the
commissioned formats of portrayal through the advent of photography, they found their colour and
shape back in walking. Electric light on the boulevards, cafes and bars that stayed open all night,
night people mingling by the river in balmy dawns. And venturing the countryside with field easels,
their work indulging in subjective ways of seeing, these passages are contained in the embodied
image. Kandinsky picked up on this movement and also used musical impressions in his pieces.
And went on to find a form of art that required no more reference. After all, any reality we can
express is natural in its source, as much as our treatment of it is unique.
A musical artist called Burial conveys this transience in electronic composition. And depending
on how one treats his works it furthers the notion that all arts exercise common structures and “..
despite the necessarily sequential nature of this discussion, singing was never distinct from poetry,
painting was never distinct from storytelling, poetry was never distinct from architecture.”6
Whistler used musical terms in his creative work, Burial has poetry structures and melodical
logic from performance art.
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His tracks mix jungle, RnB and rave, thus illustrating the range of nightly venues of Zone 2. They
evoke a certain perception I can relate to. The same accounts for the video game and movie
samples, chosen carefully to a certain mind set. Like Whistler worked remotely from his subjects,
Burial uses the mere impression of these pieces and breaks them up for his purpose. Patterns
oscillate, linger, and speed up similar to a stroll in deep thought, leading us through the narration in
an ambience that suggests, but does not emphasize the urban frame. The story is told through song,
demodulated the same way as the beat, made into his own voice, with filters as Sigur Rós, Coco
Rosie or Fever Ray use – bands who talk of the landscape in an acutely dreamful manner.
In interviews, he nametags the ghost stories of M. R. James, and the fondness for a scene that
passed away before his days, but whose afterglow never ceased. As the Nocturnes of Whistler were
dismissed for a peculiar range and style, critics attribute him angst, aloofness, allusions that
separate him from his audience and neglect conventions the genres involved are reasoned upon. The
bringing together of futuristic and retro elements is regarded as an overused element in the scene.
To his defence – this is often just what a voyage manifests.
For my walks around Lun Din – the ‘moon town’ as some etymologies propose – in its best light,
I enjoy venturing out in the dead of night. The emptiness of places that are designed to be crowded,
with the mind tuned into dreamtime, work well to gather up the giddiness that one incurs from the
unreal, unseen. Superfluous light hatches dirty roads and eroding facades, flares up on the tower
block glazing, counterpoints the perpetual aspirations of the city in the river. The only things that
remain are those we take away from it.
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A good walk should always be egoistic in some way, wilful even. This does not imply that it not
also works better for me to talk, read and do sketches. It would be idle to recount how many great
statesmen, authors, creators of music and city builders stress the relevance of ‘airing out’ their
work. In my own walks I use the tresholds of this state of mind, both more and less aware,
combining the outer and inner volumes, to get ahead of myself. As the streets pass by, the scenery
unravels, known issues blur with all the unfamiliar encountered. I remember what I am there for.
“We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the
next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.” – Paul Auster
fig. 1 – Photo taken during the British Graham Land Expedition, 1934–1937
fig. 2 – Illustration in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ by Carl Offterdinger, late 19th century
fig. 3 – Still from video taken during ‘Paradox of Praxis’ by Francis Alys, 1997
fig. 4 – Artwork from a sci-fi illustration collection by Moebius, 1980s
fig. 5 – ‘Blue Segment’ (Blaues Segment) by Wassily Kandinsky, 1921
fig. 6 – Aborigine cave painting, depicting a dream voyage, ca. 10K years BC
fig. 7 – Photo of London at sunrise, author’s own, 2006
fig. 8 – ‘Early Morning’ by James A. Whistler, 1878
fig. 9 – Cover art on self titled album by Burial, edited by himself, 2006
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Reference:
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson
2 Winifred Gallagher – New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change – 29. 12. 2011
Review by Maria Popova on brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/24/winifred-gallagher-new
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griot
4 David Vann – The Aborigines who've walked for 40,000 years – The Observer – 7. 3. 2010
guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/mar/07/david-vann-aborigines-songs-legends-past-future
5 Chloe Johnston – Wandering Through Time: Francis Alÿs’s Paseos and the Circulation of
Performance – Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies – page 9 volume 6 issue 2 –
October 2010 – http://liminalities.net/6-2/paseos.pdf
6 Adam Harper – Rouge's Foam - The Premature Burial – 3. 12. 2009
http://rougesfoam.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/premature-burial-burial-pallbearer-vs.html
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VCD1934, Understanding Communication Arts Georgij Juri 26. 4. 2013 Self Assessment / Submission Sheet Itin Gr.Design THIS SHEET MUST BE FILLED IN AND ATTACHED TO YOUR ESSAY, AS THE FINAL PAGE. 1. How has doing this essay contributed to your understanding of your field of study? The lateral nature of looking into where my views apply, and how they are treated by other people, have brought me into fields that I didn’t know much about. Having had too little time to contextualise, there will be a second round on my own terms. There was some material treating other than my chosen issue that we mentioned on the course. 2. How have you incorporated feedback given on the Object/Text assignment? Formatting issues and some style issues. I am afraid the lack of cohesion and context jumps still apply (to others than me.) 3. What has most supported you in writing this essay? How did the lectures/readings/seminar discussions supported your understanding of the topic? Have you attended any workshops/meetings with the AWL team? What use have you made of the library and study guides in the module area on unihub? Some connections made in the text, and many terms that help define an issue come from the lecture, came from re-‐reading the course work. The afternoon sessions gave me an overall more precise feeling what it entails to argue a point clearly. AWL has not been a priority because I can’t help my style, and expect my treatment of the technicalities to be viable. The books recommended for this module were gone by the end of the first week. Other works in the field are a commodity throughout the year anyways. The guide write essay I should have borrowed earlier to conduct reading and structure with. 4. What research have you done for this essay? How widely have you read around the essay topic? Which writers have helped you understand the topic best? What have you mainly used the internet for? What uses have you made of the library, including its databases? What understanding have you developed of the visual work that you have included? The topic is an issue I concern myself with anyways, it has also often enough appeared in unrelated material I enjoyed. Auster, Miller, Hesse, generic dubstep and triphop, art involving maps and land art have contributed. I have researched other publications by the authors recommended over library resources. The illustrations used were appropriated out of a similar synoptic view as the reading. 5. How well have you referenced the sources used in this work? Have you properly referenced your sources, using the MLA system? ✓
Have you used footnotes and included all sources in your bibliography? ✓
Are your illustrations clearly captioned, using the fig 1, fig 2, system? ✓ 6. Have you met the submission requirements? What is the word count for your essay? 2066 How many times are you submitting it to turnitin, to check that your referencing is adequate? 1 Are you uploading the essay as a PDF? ✓
Is the essay well presented and properly formatted (double spaced, 12pt font)? ✓ 7. What grade would you give yourself for this work? Be honest! And don’t worry we won’t take this into account when grading your essay! 9 8. Any other comments you would like to make about this learning process? So long, and thanks for all the fish.