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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.

soundwalk card

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?

Here are some links and ideas regarding our Soundwalks and "what happens next"

  • Self Study
    • Read anything by R. Murray Schafer
      A sound education is a good start.
    • book images
    • Keep an audio soundscape diary...
      • What's this? : find a location, any location and spend a length of time writing down what you can hear; the details will be endless, your vocabalry will be stretched (ps try inventing new words, e.g. instead of clang you may invent "clumst"). What you doing is writing down, noting and recording the "Soundscape" and starting the process of "ear cleaning" .
  • Links
    • The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), [link]
    • Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology On-line preence
    • Phonograhy {Link}
  • Artists
    • Pauline Oliveros [link]
    • Hildegard Westerkamp [link]
    • Victoria Fenner, How to do a Soundwalks [Link]
    • Andra McCartney [link]
    • Peter Cusack [link]
  • Forums & Egroups
    • Phonography [link]
    • Soundscape UK [link]
    • Phil Morton Soundwalk mailing list @ Frakture.org. Go to the frakture mailing list form, complete as appropriate and tick the box for soundwalks..[Link]

last updated: May 15, 2008

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