I attended a sound walk on Thursday the 19th of May 2022, it was run by Katrinem and she created a route for us to take, I was attending this as Peter Cusack whose work I have been studying and researching was also going to be there alongside Cathy Lane. I wanted to finally do a proper sound walk and potentially have time to discuss this.
We began by meeting upstairs at the Crisap Headquarters and began speaking about the rules of this sound walk. No talking, everyone must remain silent for the entire walk, we follow the leader and walk spread out not in single file. If there is an issue you are to touch the leader.
We began walking around LCC into the garden near Pret, crossing the road into an estate, and crossed the road into Elephant Park. Go around and follow up until near the police station and walk along with the main round back to the building. The walk was around an hour or so and was very interesting to me. I found myself entirely concentrated so much on the sounds around me. At times during the walk, it felt almost set up as if the sounds were put there at a specific time. Now obviously it wasn’t but it did bring a reminder of how much happens sonically around us that we don’t listen to. I also noticed an abundance of nature amongst the noise of the machine that is London city, so many birds and other animals were prominent amongst us in our sound walk. As well as the multicultural aspect of the city, when we changed roads it was different languages being spoken and music from different countries being played in the parks. Also at times I would close my eyes when the road became straight and I felt the stereo and proximity effects of sound be so prominent, I concentrated on the footsteps of my fellow walker and how we engaged with the environment.
When we returned we sat down and had a chat, Katrinem explained she wears different shoes on her sound walks to become part of the environment, she even has shoemakers help tune her heels to fit within the soundscape. Peter Cusack asked an important question that we didn’t have time to discuss as time ran out but it did make me think. He asked if anyone had an opinion about whether or not we should have walked in certain places or out effect on the soundscape. I felt at times we were invasive as a mass mob walking around silently and I did find that our objective to just observe the world silently walking as a group at times did the opposite. When we entered council estates people looked and became silent when they saw us all walking silently, perhaps the opposite of our intentions and us being silent actually disturbed the peace of the environment more than if we walked by speaking.
I want to redo this walk and record it through binaural microphones that I will take out to see if it felt as set up as last time. Perhaps as well on a second listen I can hear different aspects of it that I didn’t the first time. I’m still a tad confused about my piece or practical element. As my essay continues and I read more and more. I notice how wide the field of recording practices is in sound arts and how undocumented some are. It’s an art form or practise that isn’t as well written about. I want to perhaps attempt to copy fellow practitioners and learn from their practice and then from all of them hopefully find something for myself within it.