Movement, Rest, Encounter: Experiencing Place through Instagram
Nancy Lim
The thesis seeks to explore how the mobile photo-sharing application, Instagram, participates in and augments
our experiences and perception of place. Adopting a phenomenological approach to place, David Seamon’s (1979) theory of ‘movement’, ‘rest’, and ‘encounter’ provides the theoretical framework for which I centre this thesis around. Seamon stipulated that movement, rest, and encounter were the three fundamental pillars of place. I speci cally seek to explore how Instagram participates in these aforementioned themes. In movement, I discuss the body’s use of mobile technologies and Instagram in everyday life through the notions of ‘time-space routines’ and ‘place ballets’. In rest, I examine how Instagram can instigate a sense of ‘at-homeness’, familiarity, rootedness, and a sense of belonging in place. In encounter, I explore the various ways we encounter things in place, whether in the physical world or in the virtual place on Instagram, and how that influences how we experience or perceive them. Instagram participates in and augments our experiences and sense of place in various ways – experiences as they occur in the physical place world, the virtual place on Instagram, and our overall sense of being in emplaced, or being co-present across places as enabled by mobile media technologies.
Movement, Rest, Encounter (PDF .5MB)