Automation { 13 images } Created 22 Sep 2012
Jiuzhaigou National Park, Sichuan Province, China. Is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and China's premier national park. It's renown for its fabled blue and green lakes and spectacular waterfalls. The park has 70km of wooden walkways and 227 buses that travel up and down the 20km road, to drop off and pick up the 12,000 daily visitors at each of the designated scenic spots.
The project consists of photographs and sound recordings taken from the planked pathways of the park.
Please visit https://vimeo.com/166928923 to view a trailer of the project.
This ongoing project examines the human need for nature theory. A condition that creates mass temporal migration from dense industrialised urban environments, to experience areas of outstanding natural beauty. Automation questions the mechanisation of the individual to create the automated experience of mass tourism.
The very experience of visiting an area of outstanding natural beauty has undergone its own automation, facilitating mass production of the visitor experience. In essence the idyllic destination promising freedom from the constraints of city life, has itself become a place of prolific automated production.
Food for thought.
‘The nature of Chinese mass tourists is different from Western Counterparts, the emphasis being on seeing everything rather than relaxation (with photos as ‘proof’ of their exploits) having a much higher tolerance of crowds, built facilities and ‘staged authenticity’ (MacCannell 1999)
‘Thousands of mass tourists keeping to the rules do less damage causing less disruption to the reserve and inhabitants than 100 independent tourist wanting to do their own thing no matter whether it’s intrusive or unsustainable (Dombroski 2008)
https://vimeo.com/166928923
The project consists of photographs and sound recordings taken from the planked pathways of the park.
Please visit https://vimeo.com/166928923 to view a trailer of the project.
This ongoing project examines the human need for nature theory. A condition that creates mass temporal migration from dense industrialised urban environments, to experience areas of outstanding natural beauty. Automation questions the mechanisation of the individual to create the automated experience of mass tourism.
The very experience of visiting an area of outstanding natural beauty has undergone its own automation, facilitating mass production of the visitor experience. In essence the idyllic destination promising freedom from the constraints of city life, has itself become a place of prolific automated production.
Food for thought.
‘The nature of Chinese mass tourists is different from Western Counterparts, the emphasis being on seeing everything rather than relaxation (with photos as ‘proof’ of their exploits) having a much higher tolerance of crowds, built facilities and ‘staged authenticity’ (MacCannell 1999)
‘Thousands of mass tourists keeping to the rules do less damage causing less disruption to the reserve and inhabitants than 100 independent tourist wanting to do their own thing no matter whether it’s intrusive or unsustainable (Dombroski 2008)
https://vimeo.com/166928923
