A Walk through Redlands

A Walk Through Redlands

January 26, 2009

After browsing a bit with the "street view" function of Google Maps I started thinking about how I could create a virtual walk through Redlands that would almost have the verisimilitude of a film project. Just as when I have my own camera on my shoulder, I'm able to pivot and look around at things. On its own Google Maps is simply an impersonal record of things as they are.. but the fun of this project was the effort to inject a personal sensibility into an impersonal tool. The occasional placement of my own photographs in the scenes serves to attach personal anchors into the steady progression through space.

I would like to think that this video project captures the way public space is appropriated and inhabited by the personal. On Google Maps it is easy to browse streets or skim over places from above, but I try to remind myself that personal stories inhabit everything I am looking at. The web is great at putting generic space out there in various ways.. but not so good at letting people settle their own memories.. or reflect on that space.

A few years ago I read Peter Guralnick's biography of Elvis Presley, Last Train to Memphis. At one point Elvis brought back to Memphis a girl he was dating:

During the day they frequently drove around in an old panel truck that guaranteed anonymity, as Elvis showed her all the places that meant something to him in his life. He was painstaking, almost compulsive, about pointing out to her the route he had walked to the store, where he had played as a child, where his friends and cousins had lived, the places where he had worked and played. [422]

What's different is that the sites connected to Elvis became not just personal sites but public sites. But to begin with they were not public, just a grab bag of personal stories. But these personal paths and memories don't get recorded unless one is an Elvis.. a representative man.