Ideas / thoughts on Traversal: A work in progress part one

Traverse (verb)

Move across an area: transitive verb to travel or move across, over, or through an area or a place

To go back and forth across something: transitive and intransitive verb to move backwards and forwards across something

Traverse (noun)

Movement across an area: a movement or journey across, over, or through something

Route taken: a route or way across, over, or through something


Traversal is a new project that I am working on that intends to explore the relationship between the embodied and disembodied travel experience.

The framework for this project is grounded in historical changes that took place in the 19th century with the emergence of the railroad as a dominant form of transportation - taking over from the stage coach and walking, for example. I am particularly interested the effect this development had on perception for those traveling. Wolfgang Schivelbusch1 has suggested that the railway journey made possible a new way of perceiving the landscape that was very different from earlier forms of travel experience. Schivelbusch claims that, for the passenger, rail travel supported a panoramic perception of the terrain; this suggestion is put at odds to a multi-sensual engagement with the environment that was much more the case in pre-industrialized forms of transportation. In panoramic perception, Schivelbusch suggests, the traveler sees objects and landscapes mediated through the apparatus of the train. In this, the space of the traveler and the space of the perceived objects is separated and there is dissolution of the embodied experience. The landscape becomes a moving panorama, passing at speed outside the train window - one could imagine this like a movie projected on the window, where the only sensory experience of the landscape is vision - a vision that is separated from any further bodily experience.

To explore these ideas I undertook to traverse the landmass of Australia by train - from the bottom of the country to the top and back again. A journey of 6786km, comprising three train journeys, totaling 124 hours of train travel made during seven days travel. The journey started in Melbourne, Victoria; traveling to Darwin in the Northern Territory and ended in Adelaide, South Australia. All the railroads taken had played a historical role in the industrialization of Australia's transportation system; the earliest route taken was completed in 1888.

The experience of the journey was translated to visual, sonic and written representation using various apparatus, such as: still photography - digital and celluloid, moving image - video, field recordings and written observations.

My main attention was directed to the grand vista and the subtle detail.


1. Schivelbusch, W., The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, New ed., Leamington Spa, UK: Berg. 1986.