Walk-itch: interactions between wool, CCTV & handheld projectors

In this paper I present a participatory video walk in which the bodies of participants and the devices used to create and stream the projections were collectively mediated and spatio-temporally connected. During the video walk, participants held the devices and live-streamed moving images from and into their surroundings. Participants held portable projectors and surveillance cameras in their hands, expanding their capabilities and enabling them to shift their individual introspective action (Ito et. al, 2005) into a collective one. The projections featured people’s faces, clothes, materials, and textures. The body of each participant, in combination with the devices, was the locus of mediation and contributed to a network of projections and actions. The devices used in the video walk swayed between being ready-to-hand and present-at-hand (Heidegger, 1962), and expanded participants’ experience into the environment (Clark, 2008). When visual content moves away from fixed screens, new relations of exteriority between actors become available (DeLanda, 2006). The connections between actors are as crucial as the actors themselves (Latour, 2005) and the materials that compose them are vibrant and diverse (e.g. wool, flesh, wood, plastic, fabrics, metal). Both the connections and the materials contribute to the distribution of agency (Bennett, 2010). Already in Homemade (1965), Trish Brown was strapping a projector to her body, tapping into concepts of memories and temporalities of mediated bodies. Through a series of images and moving images, I show how the site where the video walk took place, participants, materials and devices shared agency and produced a network of actors and actions.