In-between Walks: Arnos Vale with Elisabeth Wörndl

In In-between Walks: Arnos Vale with Elisabeth Wörndl I intersected 70 images stemming from two walks undertaken in September 2018. One I undertook in Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol with my feet on the actual ground. The other was carried out in Google Street View in dialogue with Elisabeth Wörndl who at the time was in Salzburg whereas I was here in Bristol. Using my digital images created in real-time space as a guideline for a route, we took screengrabs in the dimensional photographs of Samantha Mignano (January 2015) of Arnos Vale. This proved to be more challenging than expected as moving through this kind of mediated space is not necessarily smooth and resembles not so much a stroll in the park but more a three-legged race on crutches. The details I had observed whilst walking around, such as specific decorations on gravestones or simple gathering of leaves on the floor where not to be found. Obviously, Mignano’s photographs were from another day and time of year. Yet this was only partly determining what could be explored as it proved to be near impossible to zoom into any detail or position oneself exactly within the dimensional photographic frames. To juxtaposition digital images and screengrabs from the same locality not only highlights the short comings of Google Street View but also how the mediation through the Internet can enable significant disjunctions between time and space.

This piece exists as a magazine both in printed and pdf format. It is part of my doctoral thesis Digital Porosity and its Impact on the Mediation of Networked Images (2020), University of Plymouth.