# **Walking with Video**

#### Experimental reflection on Sarah pink's guide to Graphic anthropology

Does walking with video incorporates recording movements ? Or experiences? Or could be both? When we say video recording or documenting we associate with capturing moments for a layman, but this is when I realised that anthropology too involves the same with a different objective of recording lines/movements and experiences(everything that interests our research and what helps us decode the relationships between different nodes within the space) of the spaces or any area of our ethnographic research. How is walking associated with video? Author describes video recording as a form of inscription in anthropologic terms and it makes us curious to about how different is written anthropology from the visual and how are the interrelated, if so? One way author suggests as a solution is forged in movements rather than the connection of fixed points. 

I certainly agree with the author about many context when we talk about walking with video(Graphic anthropology ) which I would like to describe from my own personal connections with the similar experiment of visiting to a nearby garden which I am familiar with since my foundation year. The route was destined to take me to the campus in the shortest amount of time,  learnt from my senior’s tacit knowledge of taking those routes. 

Attentionality, was one of the connections I could make while performing my exercise through the garden, While walking through the garden I was attracted to move towards the direction of the unique sound wave coming from a bird, which surprisingly were couple of squirrels at two different locations as if they were trying to communicate something, followed by a butterfly which actually distracted my movement for a while through the forest. What if walkers weren’t just the humans? A butterfly could be too? Author suggests the experiences and smell and breath which can’t be recorded through a video, but I think it definitely records our reaction to those kind of interactions, the garden has many back-gates for the villas and kitchens around. I could experience two different kind of smells from the two kitchens while walking by as shown in the video recorded which was more interesting when I observed them as movements, walking through one part of the park offered a breakfast like visual from the smell and on the other felt preparations for a lunch. This garden has gates in all of its direction maybe as per what localities had walked by before must have become as a well paved paths, (where the author was more interested about the significance of the path and its design for local people….When he sees a photo sent by David).

Sarah tries to build relations while walking through the path which helped me drew connections. The garden has really old trees lined up one after the other which I could see as a line, if we just had those I think we still could make our way through the park. Building relations as we walk by in the form of lines which when given a meaning or direction becomes a movement?  All surrounded by man-made beautification of different flowerbeds planted around them which is related to the sunlight requirement(which is actually controlled by these bigger old trees so it offers different subspaces of different light intensity) after speaking to a gardener there all looks like environment controlling its own environment within the space. 

When we walk we leave a layer of inscription of some mark or the other which was not quite traceable until its a rainy day but while walking over the fallen flowers and leaves and the sound generation while walking over it is what could be traced. So like, trampling over the path of old leaves and flowers leading towards a sound experience which has an interesting utility for the dwellers around. They clean it only after a huge pile os generated, because it keeps them aware at night, incase if anyone is walking by the forest. 

It feels totally like a white silence in the morning where everything is very definite in its composition the trees, the cemented paths, the chairs, lamp posts, just the air and breath passing through these definite composition as movements if we try to relate to an archipelago as discussed in the previous chapters. Sort of movement leading towards a breeze especially in the mornings.

When we talk about space and time, we might visit the space again or if futuristically a time machine available get to that time, but I think something which never can come back is the relation between the two. For example, if I walk again tomorrow or later at the same time, there is a very less chance I might be able to witness the same sound and smell at the same time, I might witness just the sound or the smell but I think something I won’t be able to witness again is the experience developed as a result of the relations built like the sound of the bird and the aroma from the kitchen.

If we see through the maps we might just see the “routes” which might be definite, destined and objected, which the author states as mapped reality, but what actually gives us a experience of the space is walking through the same which to different personas(walkers, draughtsman, jogger, dwellers) offers a different set of perceptions.