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. [↩]