Must-See
Framing the Remnants and Rituals of Tourism

Bound by time and space, the act of travel is fleeting and transitory. But for the tourist, the experience of place is rooted in the material world. From the way that sites are endorsed to the way that they are seen, visual culture constructs and orchestrates the tourist’s understanding of locality. Advertisements fuel the desire for authentic experience. Photographs, postcards, and souvenirs prolong and memorialize temporal events. While these visual artifacts validate individual experience, they are also indicative of a larger collective awareness of tourism. When circulated and distributed, these forms connect tourists in a perpetuated ritual of anticipation, pilgrimage and remembrance.

Given the pervasiveness of these visual artifacts and their influence on the practice of tourism, what is revealed when they are more closely analyzed? Using graphic design as a mode of critical inquiry, this thesis examines the framework and rituals of tourism through its visual culture. Drawing on current anthropological and sociological discourse, it aims to identify and clarify the complexities of tourism by re-evaluating and repositioning its visual forms. Some works rebuke the mechanisms of tourism, exposing unseen agendas and incentives and calling attention to the designer’s complicity in staging tourist expectations and realities. Others feed off of the system, proposing new ways to propogate and expand its patterns.

Together these works represent a collection of perspectives that traverse tourism from industry to individual in an effort to make sense of a rapidly shifting and growing industry at the human scale.

I’ve been digging through my notes from the past few semesters in search of thesis inspiration that I may have overlooked. Found this from one of our early workshops with Anne West. She asked us to write a one-page, stream of conscious piece on a term that is central to our thesis. Here is what I wrote:

Ephemera is ’stuff.’ It’s the loose leaf, trinkety, gadgety un-curated memorabilia that is meant for use in the short term. The word shares the same roots as ephemeral, which connotes fleeting, temporal, limited. But when ephemera is collected and stored, cataloged and coveted, it becomes something else. It gains a physicality and legitimacy by virtue of having been re-contextualized by its holder. It takes on symbolic stature, representing a moment shared, a brief encounter, an experience. Meaning is bestowed upon these discards, toss-aways, one-time, single-use documents, ticket stubs, pamphlets, cards, playbills, train schedules, menus, paper containers, adverts, posters, leaflets, flyers, take-ones, leave behinds.

Ephemera is rooted in time then, often mass-produced and distributed. The ubiquity of ephemera suggests an automatic lack of value, as that which exists in large quantity is not be considered rare nor worthy of resale. But over time, ephemera becomes rarified by its very nature—most copies are discarded or destroyed, leaving only those with embodied value in their absence.

So…

I finished them. For what seems like an eternity now, I have been creating guidebooks to every country of the world. At the heart of it all, is the working assumption that where people travel is determined by those who have been before them.

Let me back up a minute. For this project, I was asked to exchange work with someone else and create a thesis project using the other person’s point of view. It was a match made in heaven, as Leslie’s network analysis of online photo-sharing network, Flickr, was a great lens through which to re-examine my own thinking. My investigation began as a desire to characterize the collective conscience of travel.¹

I was compelled to quantify the global scale of tourist movements in a way that would shed light on where the most popular tourist destinations are and why travelers choose to frequent these places. Thanks to generous support from the UN World Tourism Association, I was able to gain access to a database of tourist arrivals by country. I translated their numbers into a series of books that cumulatively represent the global scale of tourist movements in one year. The number of pages within each volume corresponds to the number of documented tourist arrivals in 2005 (100,000 arrivals per page).

The resulting shelf of books is a snapshot of one year’s worth of information. I have been thinking of them both as guidebooks and as massing studies that form a physical world view². The books can be arranged and filtered in various ways³ as a means of comparing and contrasting the tourist potential (or lack thereof) of various places.

I won’t lie, it was a pretty daunting self-prescribed assignment, but I really enjoyed the process. With my crazy Excel sheet acting as a checklist, I chipped away at the countries over the course of our six-week Wintersession. There were skeptics at times (myself included), but I’m quite proud of the final result, as it gives a context to the rest of my thesis. It was important for me to understand for myself the scale and breadth of what I’m dealing with. Global tourism is peppered with all kinds of statistics, lists and quantifications. As the fastest growing industry in the world and the primary source of income for many developing nations, its effects and motivations are far-reaching. Within all this, I’m interested in unpacking the human drive to go somewhere, and to understand the patterns and cycles that occur within the context of tourism.

Guidebooks carry a strange authority in dictating where travelers go. In my own travels I often rely on a guidebook as a means of navigation, to get my bearings in unfamiliar places. But it’s also not uncommon for travelers to chart their every move by the book. Rarely do we question who is writing and editing and whether or not we trust their opinion. In a recent interview series I did with guidebook writers, I asked these questions. The answers I found were surprising. I’ll go into more detail on that in another post. But suffice it to say that within this I saw a connection between my collection of books and a shelf like this:

Due to the nature of the industry, guidebooks thicknesses are seemingly proportionate to the popularity of places. More visitors means more guidebooks sold, which in turn equals greater coverage by writers and editors of the most desirable destinations. It’s all cyclical, like so many things in tourism.

My first prototype was a stab at the most widely visited country in the world, France. Seventy-five million, fifteen thousand people visited in 2003. I played with the idea of adding postcards of the most popular tourist attractions within the country. These were later taken out of the final versions, as they seemed more like a separate idea.

I sketched out what a shelf of volumes of the entire world might look like and how the scale of the pages would work.

I then went into bookmaking mode.

You can view the fruits of my labor here. I’m going to be using these books to generate more projects. An installation of sorts? Posters? Movie?

1. Or rather, a desire to understand the similarities in behavior amongst leisure travelers. For example, posing in front of famous places is often done with an air of irony in this day and age, but one is made more comfortable knowing that everyone else around is doing it as well. [↩]
2. And it’s to scale! [↩]
3. For example, you could rearrange them by size or by continent, for starters. If you really want to get into it, they can be alphabetized. War-torn areas can be compared. Or you could separate out the islands for fun. You know, just in case you are looking for another rainy day activity. [↩]

Here is my working thesis abstract, finally. It was good to finally get something on the page, although I have to admit it was difficult to wrench myself out of making mode and into writing/thinking mode.¹

Bound by time and space, the act of travel is a fleeting and transitory experience. However, our collective movements and our experience of place are rooted in a physical world of objects and imagery.

Globalization and ever-increasing channels for visual media are shifting the way that we experience places. According to World Bank assessments, tourism is the largest and most intensively developing world industry today. Within this climate, my inquiry stems from a desire to understand the way we view the world by examining the motivations and effects of our journeys for leisure.

From the way that we ’see’ sights to the way that we record our travels, visual culture mediates our experience of locality. Sociologist John Urry’s concept of the ‘tourist gaze’ refers to a culturally learned way of looking at a place. Based on the premise that culture influences perception, the ‘tourist gaze’ shapes what tourists expect to see when they visit a destination. Today our perceptions of travel are formed by the abundance of media around us, the images, photographs, souvenirs, ephemera and the tales of those who have gone before us. We see ads enticing us to go. We see photographs of the experience of being elsewhere. We are fueled by a desire to partake in an authentic experience. By participating in this collective ritual, we influence the nature of places by virtue of our presence. Experience transforms into myth, which then entices others to go see in our wake. The reality of place transforms as a result of, and in anticipation of visitors.

The ‘gaze’ is omnipresent in current scholarly research on tourism. However, the predominant mode of investigation into this visual and material world of travel is from a cultural-anthropological perspective. Researchers use culture and history to analyze the gaze, and the objects in question take on an abstract quality.

This thesis proposes an examination of the relationships between travel, objects and place from a visual perspective. Through analysis and design studies on the form, collection and distribution of the visual media of tourism, perhaps new insights can be drawn about the cultural and historical effects of our journeys.

There you have it. Comments and feedback are welcome.

1. I totally did that thing that I just criticized in my last post. Sight : Site, indeed. I may as well have named it Re:thinking My Thesis.. I apologize for the hypocrisy, but keep in mind that this is all subject to change. [↩]

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

The first assignment in our graduate thesis class was named Re:Search.¹ We were asked to examine our thesis through the lens of a single letter, drawn at random. My letter was R.² I started by brainstorming and mapping out as many R words as I could muster. Our directive was to collect (at least) three each of: tiny objects, huge objects, physical qualities, abstract qualities, places, book titles, events from history, supermarket items, famous personalities, companies and websites related to our thesis.

I created 36 brochures to house my findings. Brochures were the perfect container for my information as they are a form that is often taken for granted as part of the vernacular of travel. They’re such an accepted component of airports, train stations, hotels, tourist traps, etc. that we often don’t even realize they are there. But they are there, sitting patiently in floor stands waiting to be unburdened of information on the closest wax museum, hot air balloon ride, petting zoo, alligator farm, amusement parks, wineries and more. I’ve been obsessed with brochure racks lately. If possible, I’d love to fill an entire brochure stand like this one:

1. I wonder about this trend of Re: anything as a naming convention. Yes, it’s a cute play on linguistic meaning, popularized by designers alike, but it’s a bit hackneyed, no? [↩]
2. Look Ma! Research starts with R! [↩]

There has been a lot of emphasis placed on ‘research’ in the weeks since school began. At the larger level, we’re being asked to respond to the question of how we, as graphic designers, employ research in our work. Specifically, for those of us working toward a design thesis, how does research inform the cohesion of both our formal work, and the written component of it? How do we approach our respective topics in a way that contributes to design discourse, but also furthers the dialogue in our subject area?

Because graphic designers use content from disciplines outside of design,¹ it’s crucial that we have at least a working understanding of the terms and conditions of our subject matter. But it’s one thing to troll Wikipedia for subject articles, or to check out a few books from the library as inspiration. It’s another thing completely to approach your subject with the rigor worthy of a PhD dissertation, to analyze and develop new possibilities or interpretations, and to immerse yourself so deeply in your subject that you could sit across the table from an expert in your field and have a mutually beneficial discussion.

These are things that have been on my mind of late. My attendance this summer at the Things that Move: The Material Worlds of Tourism and Travel Conference in the UK forced me to confront the subject of what I have to contribute to the field of tourism studies. It was a question that was (indirectly) asked of me frequently during my stay there. Surrounded by 150 ‘researchers’ from around the world, (most with PhDs, others working toward them), who were looking at the ’stuff’ of tourism in a myriad of different ways, I found myself desiring to legitimize my presence there, to respond to people’s innocent inquiries about why I was there with an answer that would make sense to them.² Oddly enough, there were less people addressing the the physical relics of tourism from a formal-historical³ perspective than I had anticipated. The conference was billed as multi-disciplinary, but the bulk of the attendees were from the social sciences. Most were not visual people, and yet they were dealing with visual things. From my perspective this is a fantastic opportunity to explore things from the other direction, to analyze the visual toward understanding the cultural and historical and to bring that to a future conference.⁴

One of the first things we were reminded of on the first day of class was that in the end, we are graphic designers, not anthropologists, sociologists, etc.. Be that as it may, I still value the ability to be able to be fluent with my content. One of my goals for the year is that when this is all said and done, I want to be able to talk shop with the cultural anthropologists, the sociologists, the urban planners and historians who are working with this topic.⁵

But back to the subject of research..

1. Within my graduating class alone, the subjects we’re tackling include anthropology, sociology, politics, linguistics, economics.. to name a few. [↩]
2. Let’s face it, Graphic Designer is a misunderstood title. To the outside world, its associated meanings equate to Photoshop Wizard, Web Designer, Production Assistant, or Hey, Can You Draw Me a Logo? It Won’t Take You Long and It Will Be Great For Your Portfolio. Given the overwhelming excess of ‘Graphics Design’ out there, it’s no surprise this misconception is so prevalent. Or that my connection with the visual aspects of tourism was not immediately apparent to those around me. [↩]
3. The term art-historical gets used a lot. I think there’s a lot of space out there for the design-historical as well. Formal-historical is a term I made up just now to try and encompass all of the disciplines that examine the formal and structural qualities of objects, with a critical eye for things such as provenance and historical context, in order to hypothesize about culture and history. [↩]
4. This is not to say that nobody is emphasizing the visual. It would be trite of me to continue without mentioning the work of critic Lucy Lippard and David Crouch and Nina Lübren. Or the recent exhibition at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. But there is a lot of room for exploration from this end. [↩]
5. Keeping in mind, of course, that the danger in existing in the middle ground is the potential for pseudo scientific work indicative of a lack of rigor in dealing with complex content. My colleague Fish could give you an earful about why this is not the way to design. [↩]

I have much to synthesize after the summer. A lot of things happened.¹ Postcards from people I met along the way have been trickling in, and they are fantastic. I have not decided exactly how to treat them yet, or if I should. Perhaps they are intact as is, I’m not sure.

School is back in full swing. I’ll be using this space to track my thoughts and process as I make my way through my final year at RISD. A few goals for the year:

1. Make stuff.²

2. Keep it simple.³

3. Explore and gain working knowledge of several mediums.⁴ I’m definitely an advocate of coming at a topic from all sides, and so I am resolving to finish out my year with guns blazing, blasting tourism with a variety or print and digital techniques.⁵

4. Stay healthy. No more sinus infections.⁶ No more food poisoning.⁷ Exercise? Mental and emotional health is equally important to me. As such, I invested a great deal of time and effort in arranging my desk the right way to make myself as comfortable as possible in the cold confines of the studio.⁸

This policy has the added benefit of allowing me to buy whatever I want (within reason–see next line item) if it will make me that much happier. No yachts with choppers (I did see one of these while strolling the marina in Cannes—ridiculous).

5. Save some money.⁹

6. See some stuff. Despite having lived in the Northeast for two years now, I feel I have seen very little of it. This insular paradox is part and parcel of graduate school, and directly linked to the fact that I don’t own a vehicle. However, it’s no excuse. So, on that note, I’m keeping a running log of things and places to go around here. Even better that it’s all directly related to my thesis.

A. Western Massachusetts (Mass MoCA—especially for the upcoming Jenny Holzer exhibit)¹⁰

B. Block Island¹¹

C. Maple sugar tapping¹²

D. I still don’t know offhand which one, geographically, is on the outside, Vermont or New Hampshire. This is pathetic.

E. Leaf tour.¹³

F. Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. Or both.

G. Then there’s always Niagara Falls. Not really in the Northeast, but close enough to make me want to go there.

Anyway, you get the point. More to come on all of this.

1. Aside from the things to which I was witness, a lot of stuff happened in my absence. For example: Karl Rove announced his resignation. !!! This makes me incredibly happy. Heath and Michelle called it quits. And several people died. Admittedly I did not do a good job of keeping up on news (US or other) while abroad. [↩]
2. Well, duh. But no, really. I think that this is a tenet that I can’t stress enough for myself, and one that I should chant like a mantra given my ability to over think an idea and work myself into a full paralysis. [↩]
3. I have a natural tendency toward the complex, I know. It’s my ally at times, but also my Achilles heel. I have resolved to treat what I make this semester as a series of studies, and to not get overly attached to any one piece too early. The studies should be resolved, but simple. [↩]
4. Including the use of footnotes. I’ve never really used them before, but I imagine someone will tell me if it gets annoying. For now, I find them novel, and a good substitute for my constant use of parentheticals. I’m currently trying my hand at building a website from start to finish and I am also about to commit myself to a year-long Lynda.com membership to pick up some more motion experience (AfterEffects and FinalCut Pro). This semester I am taking the Interactive Text course in the Digital+Media Department which will be a good arena to test these technologies. I’m also mentally committing myself to some programming, even though debugging makes me want to tear my hair out. I intend to build a web database of tourist photos (more on this to come). [↩]
5. I’m a little embarrassed to have just written that. [↩]
6. Being in bed for two weeks is the pits. I just bought some vitamins, and will be stocking Emergen-C at my desk, as well as doing a lot of hand washing, sanitizing of surfaces and the like. [↩]
7. Don’t eat the sushi at Whole Foods [↩]
8. What better way to eliminate clutter than to put everything on the wall?!? I also have a lovely money tree, which was donated by recent graduate Esther Chak. Not pictured: The giant pin-up of Canadian rocker, Bryan Adams who I was madly in love with when I was twelve. It’s there in the corner, but you don’t get to see all of it. That’s for my eyes only. [↩]
9. Well, there are gives and takes to all things in life. But I do remember all too well what it’s like to survive on one meal a day while living on a friend’s couch when jobs were scarce after graduation in 2002. Hopefully it won’t be like that this time around. That said, if you would like to offer me a job, send me an email. [↩]
10. I have ventured out to Northampton with friends a few times now, as well as to Mike’s Corn Maze, but there is so much more.. [↩]
11. What the hell is out there anyway? [↩]
12. Is that even what it’s called? I distinctly remember an episode of Reading Rainbow where LeVar Burton reads a book about maple syrup and then goes to a place where it’s harvested/made and tells us about it. I have wanted to do this ever since. In the same way that when Mr. Rogers (may he rest in peace) goes to to the Chef’s house and he is making tapioca pudding, I wanted to eat tapioca pudding. If this is not a prime example of the influence of media on our children, I don’t know what is. On that note, a quick internet search revealed several others who remembered this particular episode distinctly. How strange.. [↩]
13. Apparently there are tour buses (largely populated by seniors and New Yorkers) that take you around to see the changing leaves. Given the current weather patterns, it’s dubious whether or not this would be a worthwhile endeavor this year, but it could be an interesting experience all the same. [↩]

I flew into Basel and took the train to Zürich. It was much cheaper, and it really didn’t take that long. The train ride was incredible. The sky in Switzerland is like nothing I have ever seen before. And wouldn’t you know it, as the train cruised along a rainbow formed outside of my window as the sun was setting. I started laughing, as it seemed almost cliché that something like that would occur at that moment. It really doesn’t get much more picturesque than that.

Tom’s apartment in the city is palatial. It was absolutely gorgeous, with windows on three sides, high ceilings, great light and outdoor patios. Being there was like a holiday from my holiday, and such a great way to end the trip. The city was odd. Everywhere you turned there was a financial institution. And it was incredibly sterile. So sterile it was disconcerting. BMWs and Mercedes were regular features on the street. I spent my first day wandering the old town and taking it easy. Jana flew out on a whim for the weekend (Lifeform reunion!). It was a fantastic surprise.

On Saturday morning, after a brunch of soft boiled eggs, cheese, ham, tomatoes, warm rolls with Nutella and Tom’s mother’s homemade cherry preserves, we piled into a minivan and made our way into the Alps. I had literally been waiting eight years to make this journey. Talk about a pilgrimage. It was everything I had imagined and more. Peter Zümthor’s Therme has become an institution in Vals. To get there involves driving along winding narrow roads, passing through tiny villages to gorgeous cliffs with cascading waterfalls.

The baths defy description. The water was like nothing I have ever experience in the US—so clean and refreshing. It was a bit crowded, but there was still plenty of room to enjoy yourself. I explored every room and corner, descending stairs into pools of varying temperatures. The sun was out, so we spent a good deal of time in the outdoor pool, or sunning ourselves on the flat stones nearby. It was amazing to finally be able to connect the images I have looked at for years with the physical experience of being in this place. Whereas one would expect disappointment from this kind of built up fantasy, it was pure bliss and everything I could have hoped for. Having driven around the area, I now can see where Zümthor gets his inspiration. We also visited Caplutta Sogn Benedetg in Sumvitg, which was equally amazing.

Not surprisingly, most American conversations about Amsterdam revolve around two things: pot and hookers. Not that these things aren’t fascinating, especially in a culture that is more repressed than even it can admit. I suppose if you’re hanging out with the older circuit, conversations about Anne Frank, Rembrandt van Rijn (I would argue that the majority of American people don’t even know his last name–I didn’t.) and canals might come up, but for the most part, it’s all weed and prostitutes. And for most people stepping off of the train at Amsterdam Central Station, these vices are easily fulfilled. It’s right there in front of you. And all the tourists are there looking for it, or at least at it. It’s in all the guidebooks, why wouldn’t they go see?

My bags were like lead weights. If someone had pushed me in a canal, I would have immediately sunk to the bottom without much hope of resurfacing. Quite literally, I could barely walk. Luckily, Katie and Mandi, the two kind ladies I met in Bruxelles were able to get me into the luggage room at the Flying Pig Hostel to dump my stuff until I could get in touch with Sandrine and Bas, my gracious hosts.

A cloud of smoke wafted out the entrance of the hostel as we entered. The music was blaring in the front room/bar area and a bunch of stoned college co-eds were lounging incapacitated on a giant mattress in the storefront window. We called the elevator to get to the luggage room, and when the doors open we found two Italians rolling around on the floor making out. I couldn’t handle it. And luckily I didn’t have to.

Sandrine and Bas live about a 15 minute bike ride away from the city center. Once I arrived, they equipped me with my own room, a hot shower and my very own bicycle to use while I was in town. I biked everywhere, which is really the thing to do there. As Bas said, it’s not a city, it’s a large village. I biked to the Van Gogh Museum and the Reijksmuseum, through the Jordaan district, and of course, over to Nijhof and Lee, where I spent way more money than I care to recount. I definitely got to witness a slice of Dutch life that I would not have had I stayed in a hostel. Because I was not riding a rented bike, local cars and bikes treated me as though I was a local, and I was able to zoom about rather effortlessly. I loved the routine of biking through the Vondelpark each day. Turns out a family of storks had taken residence in the park, and it became a ritual of mine to check up on the nest as I passed through.

I decided late one day to go to the Anne Frank Huis. I hadn’t made a reservation ahead of time, but all the guidebooks tell you to go late in the day to avoid the crowds. I think everyone must have read the same thing. The wait was an hour and a half. But after the first 30 minutes I was too stubborn to leave. A heavy storm moved in while I was standing outside, but I remain undeterred. The crowd was predominately American, it seemed. I’m guessing this has to do with the fact that The Diary of Anne Frank was collectively sort of drilled into our brains as a society. Her narrative became really tactile in that space, as visitors were lead through various narrow corridors and rooms. The exhibition design was a bit heavy handed and sparsely laid out, but I guess that’s to be expected with the kind of traffic they get.

Had my first encounter with Suriname food, based on a recommendation in a recent issue of Grafik where they interviewed designers about their favorite places. It was really tasty. Also while out and about I decided to pass through the red light district to see what the fuss was about. Suddenly I became very aware that I was the only lone female in the area, aside from the ladies in their windows. I started to feel that eyes were on me (not surprising in an area that is all about looking). I definitely didn’t fit in. And perhaps people were wondering if I was on my way to my booth or something. It was uncomfortable. So I left.

The weather during my stay oscillated between sunshine and shit. I definitely got rained on more than once while biking around. But it made me feel tough, and reminded me of my days in Berkeley. One day as I was riding, a pigeon flew into my spokes. Wild. I could see myself living in this place for a while. Despite a few seedy undertones, the city has a good vibe.

Wow, it’s getting late to be writing about all this. Am back in school, thinking about lots of stuff and wanting to document it all, so I’m going to make a genuine effort to catch up here..