The Pleasure of Not Going, Not Gone: Lofi Beats, Mobilities, Synthetic AI and Augmented Realities in the Digital Age

Most tourists want to go somewhere. They seek a change in the environment. The 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Olga Tokarczuk, who writes extensively on tourism and mobility. She writes of the tourists who are “never truly gone”, like anthropologists writing about differentiated degrees of authenticity which different tourists seek. However, a recurring element in her writing is a character profile that takes pleasure in not going even when significantly mobile. For example, the joy of road trips, in which the car has everything one needs—the car constructs the most essential emotional element associated with travel. As for the rest, whether Paris, Lhasa, or Quebecois maple forests, wherever they go, they don’t go. Growing up in Yunnan vaccinated me against my friend’s appraisal and death growl for the ‘authentic’ skies. What does such pleasure—to move but not go—feel like? This presentation will engage Tokarczuk with my traveling stories to theorize and feel the different “beats” between going and moving through Lofi music (a type of music that young people love; young as in age, not specific to generation). I will then use this distinction between going and moving to look into what synthetic AI and augmented reality will look like for tourism.