up&down @ night & day

finally the exhibition is here, one week to go and things are coming together. have sound, videos, materials, a great venue, books, images, typographic elements. Have been working for 2 years on the project and for the last few months more on the production. there's an enormous amountof editing that has gone on. making a cohesive compact thing from two vast mountains and 2 enormous histories.

life and death. up and down.

Getting somewhere with this last trek up Huashan. Perhaps it was obvious from the beginning, but I don't remember picking the mountains based on location. In any case I did intuitively somehow opt for the eastern most and western most of the sacred Taoist mountains of China. Had I thought about it before I would have thought of the sun. I'm sure. Taishan was birth from the research early on, but for some reason Huashan eluded me and my research assistants. Once there it hit me. so obvious. The mountain is constantly referred to as the most dangerous in china, the dwelling place of the gods, of the five immortals, a place pilgrims go to seek immortality. Huashan is the west. the setting sun. Taishan the east, the sunrise. Taishan is birth and the bloodline and king-line of china. Huashan is death.

The trek up was gorgeous. lonely. solo. precarious. rainy, cold. by the time I reached the midpoint where the majority of the 'pilgrims' start from the cable cars, I was wet with sweat and drenched by the rain. Unlike Taishan where there are regular covered rest spots and cafes and even hotels and restaurants, Huashan was (although crowded) without a dry place to sit and get warm.



I walk fast and compete when there is a slope. I had pushed myself hard and really needed a place to dry off and warm up while I waited for my students and family. Instead I sat in the rain and my body warmth quickly turned to extreme chill. I waited for 50 minutes and by the time they arrived on the cable cars I was shaking and chattering and as close to hypothermia as I've ever been. I had to descend. It was on my cable car decline that I had the space to reflect on the nature of the mountain (Kaatje was on my lap warming me up). It was then that death and the west and the setting sun hit me. so obvious. what else is seeking immortality but a wishful attempt to avoid death? The death mountain.

huashan

“In the morning worship the Great Dipper, in the evening worship Hua Shan, from the mountain, view the stars, in the stars see the gods…”

inscription on Hua Shan

http://picasaweb.google.com/srcgxs/HuaShan#

The next mountain on the grant horizon is Huashan. We are in for an adventure. Huashan is 'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven' and is also one of the 5 sacred Taoist peaks. Recently there has been a lot of excitement over Huashan on the Internet. When I applied for this grant, I only saw images. Once the grant was approved, I began to see references to "The Deadly Huashan Hiking Trail".

This has really affected my life in a way that is almost absurd. In order to climb I need someone to watch my daughter. I want someone else to be with me to video, while I map with GPS. Ideally there will be three of us climbing at once, while another always babysits. I do not want to be responsible for any dangers, deaths, dramas. I also need to be fit. So daily jogging and swimming has become more intense. At the same time in the back of mind I've been counting how many months are left for me to get pregnant in this lifetime. I figure I could climb a mountain up to 6 months pregnant, but I shouldn't fly in the first trimester. Basically I may have to cancel having a second child in favor of climbing this mountain. I need to climb in May, it's a dramatic climb. A mountain instead of a child? Or a 40 year old pregnancy. Life goes so quickly.

Anyhow according to wikipedia "Huashan was also an important place for immortality seekers, as powerful drugs were reputed to be found there". I like hunting for immortality.

what color will this mountain be?

Taishan Red

astrid almkhlaafy

My explorations to Thailand, Borobudur and Angkor Wat fueled on my interest in mountains. The DNA of Singapore also pulled me to China, so in the tradition of the pilgrimage — in Chinese “ch' ao-shan chin-hsian”g – or 'paying one's respect to a mountain' — with the intent of better understanding some of the cultural roots of this new home, I proposed and received a grant to research, visit, climb, document and finally exhibit my findings of the pilgrimages to Mount Tai Shan and Mount Hua Shan in China. This is a report in progress.

You must ascend a mountain
to learn your relation to matter, and so to your own body,
for it is at home there,
though you are not.

Henry David Thoreau, The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, vol. 6

In July we went to Shandong province in China to climb Taishan. To pay respect to this mountain and the pilgrimage we walked, documented and mapped with GPS...all the while wearing red. In effect, we painted Taishan red by walking everywhere in red. This action made manifest the pilgrimage itself, while also conceptually conjuring up an umbilical cord, or a red bloodline.


The son of the sun
Taishan is red. it's the color of the calligraphy, the stone carving, the wish trees, the temples. From the summit, Mao claimed "From here, all of China is Red". Taishan is blood. It is the bloodline, it is the male bloodline. It is also birth, it is the east, it is mythologically from where life began.You could say that Taishan is the linga of China. It is where sons come from and where the sun first rises. It is an incredibly complex site.



So with my collaborators, we considered these thoughts and more. As women, we were most curious about gender. So many women have climbed over so many centuries to pray for male offspring. And to a goddess they prayed. How did a goddess land the top of Taishan? Taoism usually puts the female at the ground level and the male towards the sky. How did a female deity get to reign supreme with a temple at the top of a linga?


Bixia Yuanjin (pronounced BEE-cha you-on-JEEN) is the Chinese Taoist Goddess of the dawn, childbirth, and destiny. As Goddess of dawn, she attends the birth of each new day from her home high in the clouds. As Goddess of childbirth, she attends the birth of children, fixing their destiny and bringing good fortune. Dawn and childbirth are two concepts often, and quite understandably, linked in world mythology: the rising of the sun, the bringing of light to the earth, is equated with the child emerging from the darkness of the womb to the light of the world.

Tai'an City is a stretch of ancient and mystical land. Five thousand years ago here originated the brilliant Dawenkou Culture, which reflects the whole course of the transition from matriarchal society to patriarchal society and the disintegration of the primitive society.
www.asia-planet.net/china/taian.htm

While on pilgrimage, women enjoyed a degree of freedom from some of the restrictions of their daily life. They were able to travel beyond their local area, they stayed overnight outside their own home, and they met people from other regions. Although women customarily played a minor role in rituals, they were the primary or sole actors in rituals associated with the Goddess of Mount Tai (Taishan Niangniang 泰山娘娘 or Bixia Yuan-jun 碧霞元君). In addition to physical mobility, pilgrimages allowed women to exercise ritual authority and agency and to establish new identities as mothers and ritual experts.
Brian Dott, Identity Reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in Late Imperial China

Over the week that we were at the mountain we climbed altogether over 8 times. Sometimes as a group, other times solo. Most often in red. When not in red we were documenting and interviewing over a hundred pilgrims. On the final day we performed an 'ode to the pilgrimage' at the base of the mountain, outside the temple to Bixia.


In the way
The most important 'performance' piece was at the top, leading up to the gate of heaven, here is where every pilgrim passes up to the summit. At this location, i walked zig-zag down, along every step, passing by everyone walking up, being in the way of the way. This was documented with gps, video and photography as well.

In a time where we are most often in urban settings, focused on screens, communicating virtually, it is easy to forget that the grand events of the past have often been on foot, up mountains, with strangers, to pray. On a meta level, I hope that by embarking on these pilgrimages, documenting the journeys, researching and studying the locations and finally exhibiting and sharing my findings that somehow the content will inspire others to explore heritage sites and become inspired by historical and cultural wonders.

The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.
— E.T.A.W. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren. B, vol. II, sect. 5 (1892).

So far this has been partially exhibited in Tokyo and most recently in the 2008 Fall International Digital Design Invitation Exhibit, South Korea.

GPS poetry — ISEA exhibition

While learning about the creative possibilities of my Garmin GPS I began to experiment. I wanted to write big messages and began immediately after the desired technology caught up to my ideas. For my first experiment I created an alphabet along the beach in Krabi, Thailand. Halfway through I realized it was backwards. The scale was enormous but not a typeface I wanted to continue in Illustrator.

What I gleaned from this was the tide and the topography affect the ability to carry out the task. These are walked, I mean, I walk up and down and back and forth on the beach, imagining what the letter will look like from a plane above. It's pretty amusing to the people sitting and relaxing at the beach bars. I was asked if I was treasure hunting, lost, in need of help—when i answered that i was writing it really made for instant conversations with very curious questions. After the slightly successful alphabet, i moved on to bigger and grander ideas. I had a quote that i wanted to write along the other side of the beach, ideal for the location, so it became a site specific piece of walked poetry:

May the tide be soon enough on high to keep our abstract verse from being dry

— Robert Frost, Etherealizing.

When viewed in google earth the quote is often shown with the tide in, and so the abstract verse is rarely dry. When written, the descenders of the ‘y’, ‘g’ & ‘p’ touched the water. The reaction of onlookers was never dry, nor the intention of the project, and so the walk (over 10km) physically expressed the location, the quotation and used the technology in an unconventional yet clear way.

I also discovered en route that script was far easier to walk than a serif or sans serif typeface. since my track was always being recorded i could relax in general within one word. when it came to word spacing i leapt quickly (since there is a time factor in this process of being recorded) to the next word. in general the legibility of this improved dramatically.

The next location was in Bintan, Indonesia. I researched the location and was really drawn to the historical drama of the Sultan of Malacca (Malaysia), Mahmud Shah, who fled the Portuguese and escaped to Bintan, bringing with him Islam to Indonesia. The survival and adaptability of a man, who was probably one of the richest on the planet in his day—the kind of the spice trade route—really intrigued me. He lives on through the religion, Indonesia has the largest Muslim population on the planet. That combined with the nature of this kind of writing, and the gorgeous location (we were staying in a resort on the island) led to this quote (roughly of the same period):

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man’s knowledge, not according to his own.

— Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) “Of Practice,” The Essays (Les Essais), bk. II, ch. 6, Abel Langelier, Paris (1595).

This led to another 'walked thought' based on my experiences in Angkor Wat. Angkor is extraordinary. but it is also so incredibly fragile, Siem Reap depending so heavily on it's past for basic survival now. I was overwhelmed by the scale of the space, and by the ruins of boulders tumbling down everywhere. I'd also spent a day exploring Tonlé Sap which geographically explained the location of the Angor ruins, such a futile source of nourishment, but today surrounded by impoverished communities dependent on weather and tourism. I hired a boat and explored the floating villages of Vietnamese and Cham communities and this influenced my quote:

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land: “What the Thunder Said”

I had spent three days already exploring the site and found only one location possible for walking type. It was along the edge of the eastern baray leading up to the Bayon. This was my first attempt at writing on soil: dusty dry, weedy. I imagined that it was once water, or along the shore of the artificial lake. In reality I ended up bumping into a tuk tuk parking area and had to write and navigate the word 'ruins' around the crowd. it was not easy, and that made the quote feel even more appropriate.

"these fragments"

I like the way i can merge my love for walking and reading and archaeology and poetics into a space. I also enjoy the invisibility of the message. I know what I'm doing, but no one else has a clue. There is so much potential in that. Peace signs in war zones, poison signs in toxic waste lands. it's an open palette.

Through these experiments I was asked to show at last year's ISEA conference here in Singapore. I met some fascinating people, Ema Ota of Dislocate Tokyo was one I'd like to show with in the future.

isea exhibition — NTU, singapore 2008

Angkor Wat

“Mountains are cosmological symbols of the divine—human meeting, as well as the point of creation—creation of community as well as cosmos. Depending upon the era, culture, and text, the cosmological emphasis on the mountain might be one or more of the following: the assembly place of the gods, the connection between heaven and earth, the center/navel of the earth (and thus the locus of creation), the locus of revelation.” — Donaldson, Terence L., Jesus on the Mountain. A Study in Matthean Theology.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Chinese proverb.

From Borobudur, my research lead me to consider other locations dedicated to conveying religion through architecture and the pedestrian experience. Spaces that are associated with mountains, that are mystical, that have the power to draw crowds, and which were made for spiritual purposes and for the benefit of the pilgrim and to help in enlightenment.

“The mountains ... are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Angkor Wat was next. Obviously the mountain is embedded deeply in the architectural iconography. Mount Meru is conjured up as is the procession of a mandala, from the profane into the sacred. The fusion in south east Asia of animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, into these shrines, temples, mandalas, and processions weaves history and culture and creativity together into living rites of passage that keep alive older pilgrimages and history and refer back in time to other spaces and countries. knowledge is stored in these paths, but reading is also untangling and sifting. the threads are so intertwined and complex.


Following on the footpath of research from Thailand’s Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) and the work into the Nalanda trail— the spread of Buddhism into south east Asia— while focusing on the walking experience as physical communication, and while continuing the mountain research from Sisyphus to Borobudur and the mythical Mount Meru, I spent a week in February 2008 GPS mapping and absorbing Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, located at 13Δ˚24’45”N, 103˚52’0”E is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire’s state temples, the later plan of concentric galleries, and influences from Orissa and the Chola of Tamil Nadu, India. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.

The spaces however do not end as metaphors that are simply physical duplicates of a physical or mythical mountains, they also become representations of centers of the universe:


omphalos:
in Greek and Roman religion, navel-shaped stone used in the rites of many cults. The most famous omphalos was at Delphi; it was supposed to mark the center of the earth.” — The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.

“Along the southeast Asian peninsula, mountains were regarded as sacred territories as early as three thousand years ago. As sources of water, and therefore of agricultural fertility, mountains were the subject of reverence and ritual celebration. But as burial sites, these same mountains inspired ore profound questions of death, impermanence and the fragile balance between humankind and the forces which could destroy fields, crops, families, and on occasions, entire generations living in villages which were swept away by floods and landslides falling from neighboring slopes. Given this reverence in which mountains were perceived, ancient peninsula civilizations such as the Cambodian Funan people of the second century AD, enthroned their sovereigns and emperors on these mountain summits. Indeed, the word Funan can be translated as either Sacred Mountain, or King of the Mountains. Following the downfall of the Funan, the Khmer dynasty began to spread it’s civilization from Cambodia in the ninth century to govern most of southeast Asia over the next six hundred years.” — Adrian Cooper, Sacred Mountains, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Meaning.
The Khmer people continued to draw inspiration form local mountains, in fact building their cities and temples either with respect to the views, in alignment with, or in reference to local and mythological mountains. They too, called themselves kings of the mountain. By becoming the mountain, these rulers direct the gaze of their people. They are the center. Their capital and magnet. The man-made peaks beckon the faithful and center the pilgrims both to look inward — at their rulers and their monuments and their direct descent from mountains, and outward from a common home from where they go and return on longer pilgrimages. These metaphorical mountains, the palaces and temples of the mountain rulers of Angkor Wat, Burma, Java, and Bali give their visitors religion, history, culture, and guides towards spiritual attainment towards a larger pilgrimage of the life well lived as a Hindu or Buddhist. So the monuments are mountains of knowledge as well as physical metaphors for the mountains they represent. This is a universal metaphor:

“It was common in the ancient Near East to construct temples and altars with mountain symbolism.The religious center is thus accorded cosmic significance. That is, the mountain-temple or temple-mount—especially in the political capital—manifests a divine sanction, a sacral quality, and thus a relationship to the cosmos which other places do not possess. — Clements, R. E., God and Temple.

“Besides natural mountains, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the Canaanite temples were constructed as sacred meeting places between humans and the gods, as gateways to the heavens, as divine thrones, and likely also as altars: that is, locations for the enactment of ritual at or upon the axis mundi.Egyptian pyramids also bore this cosmological significance. In the inscriptions found in the pyramids of Mer-ne-Re and Nefer-ka-Re (both Sixth Dynasty, 24th century BCE), an analogy is made between the primeval hill that emerged from the watery chaos at creation and the building of the pyramid. — Wilson, John A., 1969 “Egyptian Myths, Tales, and Mortuary Texts.”

So in the manmade mountains we receive a sense of identity as far as group. we belong to a larger unit. and yet beyond the immediate connections to our community we also are guided through visual narratives along the designed pedestrian experience that allude to grander pilgrimages, meta journeys of life. Angkor Wat alludes to the Ramayana and Mount Meru and Mt Kailash. Borobodur to Mt Sumeru and the the way towards the life of a Buddha. These created axis mundi, mountain centers are centers and also guides. The pilgrim can then absorb the lessons and head north.

“And often, guarding and overlooking the man-made omphalos, generally to the north of it in the direction from which disruptive forces are traditionally supposed to emanate, is found a lone, conical mountain. It’s mythological prototype is the mountain at the centre of the world. The chief god of the pantheon resides there, presiding awesomely over the rituals in his sanctuary below. The traditional sacred landscape,
— John Mitchell, At the Center of the World, Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and other Ritualized Landscapes

So when we seek a mountain, or enlightenment, as the Chinese like equate the two, we seek our own center. The pilgrim goes physically on a quest to a location that represents the center of a universe, the universe as a whole, but also the center of the pilgrim. By moving outward we somehow move inward. By seeking we see ourselves from a new perspective, and in many of the instances that have been examined, that persepctive is one of centering the pilgrim at the heart of the mandala. The axis mundi within.

There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once relent,
His first avow’d intent,
To be a Pilgrim.
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Borobudur

The mountain stood there to be pointed at.
— Robert Frost.

“I keep a mountain anchored off eastward a little way, which I ascend in my dreams both awake and asleep. Its broad base spreads over a village or two, which does not know it; neither does it know them, nor do I when I ascend it. I can see its general outline as plainly now in my mind as that of Wachusett. I do not invent in the least, but state exactly what I see. I find that I go up it when I am light-footed and earnest. It ever smokes like an altar with its sacrifice. I am not aware that a single villager frequents it or knows of it. I keep this mountain to ride instead of a horse.” — Henry David Thoreau.

The mountain as a spiritual pilgrim destination is not specific to any one region; it is an archetypal metaphor that transcends location and time. Think of Olympus, Ararat, Zion, Sinai, the Temple at Delphi, the Tower of Babylon, Ziggurats, Pyramids, Manchu Picchu, Temples on Mounts, Mounds, Tells and so many other upward looking locations where we are inspired to consider if not engage in intense communication . We have real mountains where real gods reside, and man-made mountains where we see the achievements of civilizations. This holds true for the Americas, Africa, Australia and of course Asia. But it is the mountain in Asia that inspires my imagination. It’s the small temples perched on hilltops, the monuments of Borobodur and Angkor Wat, and the gaze of the regions religions up to Mount Meru, Mount Sumeru, and Mount Kailas. The first step into climbing up in a pilgrimage and physically experiencing the bliss of the summit made me hungry to see mountains in a range of locations and range of manifestations.


The next location was Borobudur. A man made mountain metaphor in the shape of a mandala, where the circumnambulation and the visual richness of the striated friezes leads the pilgrim through a symbolic 10 cycle walk mirroring the 10 steps of enlightenment towards Buddhism.

pil·grim·age: 1. A journey to a sacred place or shrine.
2. A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.
— The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000,

The sophistication of the experience is made clearer by researching the nature of Buddhism. By walking Borobudur you live out by physically enacting spiritual concepts which are extraordinarily complex and conceptual. The experience of Borobudur is one of the most advanced spaces made for pilgrims to read as they walk. It’s impossible to put into words how much information is packaged into the mountain monument.


Being on site for three days, in the only hotel within the complex walls, meant we had full access to the monument whenever we became hungry for further reading. it is a tranquil and harmonious space. It takes time and transcends time. It is a bold statement and unlike anything in the region.

Mount Meru: a sacred mountain in Hindu, Buddhist cosmology, and Jain mythology considered to be the center of all physical and spiritual universes. It is believed to be the abode of Brahma and other deities. The mountain is said to be 80,000 yojanas or leagues (450,000 km) high and located in Jambudvipa, one of the continents on earth in Hindu mythology. Many Hindu temples, including Angkor Wat, the principal temple of Angkor in Cambodia, have been built as symbolic representations of the mountain.” — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Sumeru: the polar center of a mandala-like complex of seas and mountains. The square base of Sumeru is surrounded by a square moat-like ocean, which is in turn surrounded by a ring (or rather square) wall of mountains, which is in turn surrounded by a sea, each diminishing in width and height from the one closer to Sumeru. There are seven seas and seven surrounding mountain-walls, until one comes to the vast outer sea which forms most of the surface of the world, in which the known continents are merely small islands. The known world, which is located on the continent of Jambudvipa, is directly south of Sumeru.” —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumeru.

“Some beliefs, local to that area of the Himalayas, associate mythical Mount Meru with a mountain called Kailas near the Lake Manasarovar in Tibet, which can be traced to some later layers of Mahabharata.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Meru.

Mount Kailash:“The most sacred mountain in the world. Uncannily symmetrical, this remote and remarkable peak located in the forbidden land of Tibet might have built by superhuman hands. It stands out of a primordial landscape: a horizontally stratified plinth thousands of feet high, crowned with a perfect cone of pure snow. To Hindus it is the Throne of the great god Shiva. Buddhists associate it with Chakrasamvara, a powerful Tantric deity, and with the sage Milarepa, who fought a magic duel there with a shaman priest in ancient times. To the Bonpo, the followers of the indigenous religion of Tibet, it is the giant crystal on which their founder, Thonpa Shenrab, descended to earth from the skies.” — John Snelling, The Sacred Mountain (Travellers and Pilgrims at Mount Kailas in Western Tibet and The Great Universal Symbol of the Sacred Mountain).

With the understanding of or at the very least the point of reference of these mountains in mind, every mandala, every stupa, every 5 peaked architectural wonder suddenly becomes a reference or a metaphor for at least one of these mountains, pivotal to the regions grand religions.

“The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.” — Aleister Crowley.

Wat Tham Suea or 1300 steps

When I think of mountains I think of quests, of looking and climbing, of pushing and expanding horizons. The mountain started of in the metaphorical zone, getting to Singapore was a feat. Finding what I wanted — a push, getting what I needed as far as a place where I could open my horizons and expand my daughter’s views — much of the goal.

It felt like a mountain. In many ways I dealt with the task by climbing as many hills as possible while I waited in San Francisco. The walks up, laptop over shoulder and emails in limbo, breath and lungs expanding and steepness to physically confront helped in the waiting.

When we finally arrived, the hilltop grass of ADM immediately called for a Sisyphus experience. In the research around Sysiphus, Camus and the solar theory led me out of the repetitive negativity that is so often associated with his myth, and my perspective broadened and narrowed. I needed to take a first step, climb something that could expand my views further. Map it. Experience it.

The opportunity came in a visit to Krabi where a 1300 step climb to a temple of a Buddhapada ­— a footprint of Buddha ­— made sense to me as an ideal first step. With my GPS and camera and openness to the space, I climbed. What could have been an hour trek and a simple task of documentation was instead what I had hoped for. Suddenly the views opened up
and my need to research and figure out the nature of the journey inspired me.

This space, a hilltop set aside for anyone to walk up, paved with steps, jeweled with stupas, through a jungle up a steep incline, created to be experienced is a mirror on a micro level of temples and monuments, mountains and hilltops throughout Asia. The mountain as religion. The place where earth and sky meet or where earth reaches up to sky, where the two realms seem to touch has been a place of tension and speculation, legend and myth, hermit and pilgrim all around the world.

To understand the space, the pilgrim must climb. In the act of climbing, you become one of many who have climbed before, of who built, of who will climb in the future. the path becomes a thread like a timeline that you enter into and become part of. You engage in unity. You share identity. You become part of a path. The path is a metaphor to enlightenment. The climb a rite of passage, the individual part of the larger flow of humanity.

GPS map of the climb

5 km from Krabi Town is a small temple, one of the south’s most famous meditation centres, built inside a long shallow limestone cave, surrounded by natural forest. The temple has two staircases winding up a limestone cliff — 1300 steps up to a footprint of Buddha. I figured this was a good place to start my research – a first step into mapping with the gps and a first step into the experience of climbing towards something – and finally a first step into experiencing a local procession space.


Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) named after a rock formation resembling a tiger paw, is a forest temple in southern Thailand. The main hall inside the cave, was built for practicing meditation, while a circular path leading up from the temple, is a 300-meter high staircase of 1300 steps leading to a footprint of Buddha, a Buddhapada. Statues of Buddhas accompanying the footprint are visible from the surrounding valley. This temple complex not is a religious site for the 260 monks and nuns who live and worship there, and also an archaeological area of interest with natural caves in an overgrown jungle valley where stone tools, pottery remains and the mold for making Buddha footprints have been excavated.

The first steps

The monks and nuns follow Phra Archan Jumnean Seelasettho, who teaches the meditation technique Vipassana (insight meditation). A synonym for Vipassana is paccakkha, meaning “before the eyes,” which refers to direct experiential perception. Exactly the kind of experience trekking up a mountain of stairs might be seen as being. This type of direct perception, is directly opposed to knowledge derived from reasoning or argument.


In the spirit of Vipassana, and as an experience designer, the challenge of trekking up 1300 steps to have Buddha’s footprint before my eyes, brought me to Krabi. In order to capture and document the experience, I brought a Garmin GPS Map 60CSX w/ sensors & maps,
a still camera, and a video camera. The 60CSX can record altitude shifts, as well as global positioning. How effective will the GPS be, when used in conjunction with photography and video, in capturing the walk up the mountain?

The marks of the trek (every 13 step was marked on the GPS)

Being immersed in an experience while mapping and documenting gave me multiple levels of experiental data to examine. From the data collected I had a large amount of raw material to work with to create a translation of the experience. This project was a first step towards a series of projects. With the possibilities determined of the technology, I have gone on to map Angkor Wat, Borobodur, and other monuments created to be walked, as well as local festivals and processions, pilgrimages and historical routes.

The summit and the Buddhapada