Soundwalks.....
The Short Story: Soundwalk is a walk by one or more people, the Listening Room style and rules are: During the walk there is no talking, the session is usually 3 x 20 minute sections. Sometimes the Soundwalk maybe static: the participants do not move and absorb the sounds of a very specific site. Different leaders will different styles. Variations on the theme are endless.
The Long Story : My first contact with the idea of soundwalks was really in the form of what I then called Soundscapes, the text recording of a soundscape ( literary, writing down what you can hear, where you happen to be. I encountered this practice in "Musics" magazine during the 1970's.
The concept of this seemingly avant-garde practice stroke meditational pratice was further expanded by my reading of the writings of Murray R Schaffer; the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology website; other sound-artists noted below and Phonography.
Following the creation of Frakture (by myself & Phil Hargeaves in 1997) I formed the Listening Room in 1998. Part of the Listening Rooms agenda was working with found sound, the acoustic environment, and finally Soundwalks .
Reactions & Puzzles: most people enjoy Soundwalks, and the obvious absence of the "performer", traditional performance etc creates an atmosphere of how can this be?
find-out.
"The Listening Room takes you to undiscovered places: means of transit, SOUND"
What Happens Next: after the soundwalk? some ideas here
last updated: August 10, 2010
