My Mission

After speaking to Jon and Polly I decided my ideas needed more focus. They made me realise that although the live streaming would be exciting to work with, the most important part of the end product would be the user experience. How people interact with it? How they use it? How it affects their life?

In order to focus my mind and work out exactly what I should look at during PLAY I went back and looked at my insights, my ideas book and the reason I chose this area in the first place.

"half-empty carriages making their way across a landscape: the silence that reigns inside while the wheels beat in rhythm against the rails outside, the dreaminess fostered by the noise and the view from the windows, a dreaminess in which we seem to stand outside our normal selves and have access to thoughts and memories that may not arise in more settled circumstances"

Alain De Botton descibes travel for me perfectly here. His book has acted as a great source of inspiration for my project and this is the reason I have named my project after his book, The Art of Travel. His book is about describing his experiences of travel using the help of great artists, writers and thinkers. Although my project has nothing to do with this aspect of the book, the title allows me to describe in a few words why I love travel so much.

The art that I want to look at is the great, flowing views that we see from simply looking out of a moving train window. The vast, fluid landscapes and the glimpses of other lives we catch in a second. So taking all of that into account along with the insights gained from people during my research, heres my initial mission statement:

Through this project I want to recreate the enjoyable experiences of travel. The monotony, the serenity, the time for thought, the opportunity to delve into our memories and the chance to enjoy the beautiful scenes that we often take for granted.