Measuring movements in the field: Practices of surveying community walking areas in Finland and Australia

Abstract

Walking involves aligning, recalibrating, and interacting with the environment. Growing research in the humanities and social sciences recognises walking as an embodied practice that situates humans in the nonhuman realm, and is indicative of how our mobilities connect with larger socio-cultural and environmental systems. The ‘Land Art’ movement used walking interventions that respond to environmental elements, however many of these artworks focus on the individual human perspective, disregarding nonhuman actions that also exist in each site. Focusing on the act of walking through forests and parks in Finland and Australia, this paper examines creative practices of ‘surveying’ that foreground more-than-human movements. I discuss site-specific artworks and experiments that respond to sites frequently walked over, to create new modes of encounter that alters anthropocentric perceptions of walking practices. Measuring movements in the field, through appropriating formal practices of surveying, assists in understanding how human action is positioned within broader ecologies and global systems of measure.