Touristic Pursuits

Something I have mentioned here before is the relationship between material space, the individual, and the screen. The screen itself is merely a loose signification of various technologies that we navigate through and around in our lives. This has been particularly interesting for me since arriving here in America, at first I experienced a kind of cultural alienation, confronted with this massive proliferation of technology that hasn't yet reached or become common-place in New Zealand. For me it's pretty funny to see people walking around animatedly talking to themselves before catching the tell-tale iPhone jutting from their clenched fist or pocket, but more interesting is watching hapless tourists (much like myself) armed with iPhones and iPads navigating the city via their technologies, people literally stare at their screens more than their urban surroundings. This seems an interesting metaphor for the entire touristic enterprise, in which the unknown environment is rendered intelligible, the sense of cultural and spatial alienation is lessened. This effect is caused not just in the sense of information about your position being readily available (google maps, wikipedia), but also, thinking of different technologies, the video/camera, the unknown space is framed similarly to the televised or filmic image, thus the unknown environment can be read almost as a set as a opposed to a reality. I previously called this an "enterprise of incessant deferral of contact and engagement", and I feel as though this accurately describes my own feelings about the place of the camera in regards to tourism. I have also previously mentioned my trip to Vietnam, there I purposefully limited my camera use, I thought that this would perhaps enhance my engagement with the touristic space. Sounds naff, anyway, I realised that I'm a highly nostalgic person, and now I have a whole lot of photos of New York.

Loose thoughts, hopefully I can think through this some more in the future.

Source: http://bloodmemoryspace.blogspot.com/2010/08/touristic-pursuits.html