A journey to Rotterdam

This piece is about modern business travel, and also what we see and don't see as we travel by modern transport systems. How aware are the people who make commercial and economic decisions? To what extent are they isolated in a bubble of travel and its conventions?

The 'front page' of the work imitates the seventeenth century book title page, and the Carillon music also suggests this time when the Netherlands were at their economic zenith.

But the 'exact and precise narrative' of a one-day business trip to Rotterdam is told through:
- images of the seats I sat on (seats which normally you just don't notice, but which are instantly recognisable for wha t they are.)
- excerpts from 'background' sounds I heard (again, sounds you normally ignore, but instantly recognise.)
- accurate timings for the actual journey, in ten-minute blocks, shown in GMT, and CET as well when in the Netherlands.

It's meant to explore a closed world in which, to a large extent, you turn your senses off. Travel isn't 'romantic' as it might have been in the seventeenth century: it's a process of switching off until you get there, killing time, and moving from one impersonal conveyance or waiting area to another. Global business is conducted in offices that could be anywhere on the earth. But all of these places and sounds still have their own existence and importance, whether we notice them or not.

Please note: tried to upload this as a zipped .swf file and the .htm file that contains it. However your form keeps refusing it. Therefore I've given the URL of where it currently lives. Let me know if you want the actual htm and swf files.