GOING ON TOUR: ART & TOURISM

For folks who were interested in the video clip we watched on the 1999 WTO ministerial meeting and protests in Seattle, "This is What Democracy Looks Like" is the title and you can get it here.
The institution that was born out of one aspect of those protests is the Independent Media Center, which is now all over the world, including here in ChUrb.
Hope you all have a great summer!

Everyone should have received an email invitation to be a collaborator on a Google Map titled "Can I Get A Witness?". This map will serve as the repository for our final exercise in creating tours, and unfortunately with very little time to develop them.
Each person's map (you can also work in small groups) should incorporate 3 of the 4 kinds of knowledge/information listed below:
1. Personal (anecdotal)
2. Instructional, directive (Go here, do this, turn right at the tree, etc)
3. Descriptive, observational ("The food is great, but the wait staff is mean" or "The sounds here are loud")
4. Theoretical, historical (using material discussed in class - Lippard, Ulmer, MacCannell, etc)
Here is a good, thorough walk-through of how to make custom icons for your map - something we need to do to adequately differentiate our tours within the space of one map.
We'll talk about what people come up with and the final reading, "Political Tourism" by Rob Shields for our (sigh) last class.

Wow... our last class is next week! We didn't get around to all the readings I prepared for us, but there is one more that I would like to discuss from the course packet: Rob Shield's "Political Tourism".
We will assemble our own tourist guidebook between now and then...
And everyone should have received info via email about the May 1 field trip to Funk's Grove. If you would like to go, we are meeting at 9am (you should be a little early, as we will be leaving as close to 9 as possible) in Flagg Hall (just across 4th and to the North from Art & Design).

Hi All.
Tonight, in my absence, I'm asking people to share the background and individual/group expectations of the walks you've all created. They should be posted to the discussion forum already.
Next week, we will do a more in depth report back, as I want everyone to actually experience at least one of the other walks produced. We'll talk about how the creators' intentions and your experiences aligned, or diverged.
We'll also discuss the final exercise (the group tour guide) and this reading by Gregory Ulmer. (You will have to sign in to the UIUC library system to access it).
See you all next week, when the weather will hopefully be better. It's raining in Virginia too...

So as many of you are probably aware, the likelihood of rain during our scheduled walk tonight is high. Therefore, we're going to "Plan B".
Plan B is to meet at Lincoln Square Village (otherwise known as Lincoln Square Mall) - at the entrance next to the post office, where Broadway dead ends at Elm. PLEASE BE THERE BY 7pm!
See you there!

For those who need to catch a bus:
Take the 10E Gold that runs on Peabody, right in front of At & Design. If you catch the 6:37pm bus, you'll get to Lincoln Square before 7pm, no problem.

AND: There will be a Friday, May 1 field trip! We will discuss details in class.

There are 3 parts to this post.

1. The next exercise involves producing a guided walk. This can be done solo or as a group, and it can be the same groups you've been working in. Instructions follow:
Craft a walking tour, where the touristic experience is based on the mobility of walking, rather than on discrete sites. Emphasis should be on the movement of the tourist/audience and significant thought should be places on the linear, sequential aspect of space-time experience. A set of simple instructions for walkers should be produced - the walk will be plotted in Google Maps. Use your existing Google accounts (or create one if you haven't already) and rather than placing nodes (sites/sights) use the line tool to create a path. Write a short description for what your walk is, include any narrative or backstory you'd like to be considered during the walk.
Keep time in mind... your walks should be under 2 miles.
Copy and paste your Google Maps URL (*remember to copy the "link" to the map, don't just copy what's in the address field of your browser).
Have you map created and posted to the discussion forum by next class, Monday, April 13.

2. Some links that we looked at in class: Richard Long (some criticism that mentions Rasheed Araeen's parody of his Arctic Circle sculpture), Janet Cardiff/George Miller, Hamish Fulton, Nick Brown, Platform, Take Back the Night, Bus Rider's Union, Walk and Squawk.

3. For our next class, April 13 we will also take a walk. Our itinerary will be based on railroad lines that no longer exist that used to serve C-U in multiple ways, but our walk is also structured to take us through a variety of inhabited landscapes. The walk is just over 4 miles, so it should take us about 2 hours. We will start in East Urbana and end in Downtown Champaign - so wear comfortable shoes!
Here is a link to a map of our walk - PLEASE BE ON TIME, so that we can get started.
In the event of really bad weather (like a tornado warning) I will have a plan B.

We'll be discussing John Urry's chapter "Pavements and Paths" from his book Mobilities, which looks at the shifting meaning of walking. Remember to make a comment in the discussion forum to start us off.
Also, depending on the conditions, we may be doing some walking of our own Monday night... so wear appropriate foot technology.
Have a great weekend and see you Monday.
And if you have some spare time (in April, you say?) check out this super ambitious project initiated a few years ago by one of our former MFA grads (currently a PhD candidate in Landscape Architecture), Nick Brown called Walking as Knowing as Making.
image above from the WaKaM website.