Real-time observation for iPad and GoPro, from a day’s site/sound works over five train journeys 01/10/15.
These pieces look at the relationship between mobility and temporality. Commuting has a wide range of rhythms, which shift between boredom and frustration, pleasure and reflexivity. Tim Edensor talks about rhythmic mosaics constructed from the daily activities and interactions of “…multiple social actors – shopkeepers, workers, dog-walkers, wardens, students, the young and old that …collectively constitute space through their rhythmic practices”. Commuting adds to this rhythmic mosaic.
Commuting rhythms shape the mobile experience of space. Places are not fixed; they are experienced as familiar fixtures passing under the same or varied conditions of travel. Commuting rhythms synchronised to the same time, along the same route. Places are “… locations at which multiple temporalities collide, synchronise and interweave” (Crang 2001). The variation of stops en route, the numbers of bends and obstacles along the way, the passing of familiar landmarks and objects at a predictable speed all afford a subtle and enhanced appreciation of place. This is highlighted when things go wrong, for instance here when a train is cancelled.
It also shows our acceptance of the current neo-liberal system where UK trains are run by companies for profit, using woefully antiquated rolling stock.
refs: Crang M ‘Rhythms of the City: Temporalised Space and Motion’ in Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge 2001.
Cresswell T, Merriman P. (Eds.) ‘Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects’. Surrey, England, Burlington USA: Ashgate 2011
