Vista

The app takes you on a journey reflecting upon Torquay — its histories, landscape and contemporary panoramas — in dialogue with another coastal town across the Atlantic Ocean: Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada.

By downloading the app onto an Android device or iPhone, you can follow a journey along the Torquay seafront that will take about 30-40 minutes. It can be taken alone or in small groups.

Vista contemplates questions of health and the environments that surround us. Torquay and Halifax are two places that have long existed as sites of migration: Halifax’s “Great Harbour” (Kji’puktuk) is a place of great spiritual significance for the Mi’kmaq people, while Victorians flocked to Torquay’s mild climate and warm, “healing waters” in the late nineteenth century, substantially growing the town’s population.

Through a series of recorded conversations, an ambient soundtrack and questions of both a philosophical and factual nature, Vista attempts to navigate the space between the ideal and the practical, both of which shape issues from urban design to public health in the ever-present mythology and memory of both places.