From Specialization to Democratization: The Age of the Amateur
The soundwalk in particular depends on audience perspective and participation. Take Andra McCartney’s Soundwalking Interactions, a documentation of public soundwalk through media including sound recording, still photography, and video recording. Soundwalking Interactions emphasizes the various points of interaction created via the process of the soundwalk, between and among “among audiences, sound environments, research contexts, movements, media, senses, and places.”[6] Concerned with the role of the participant in the soundwalk, Soundwalking Interactions addressing issues such as agency and improvisation. One recent soundwalk that explored relationships between bodily movements and sense of place developed into a presentation of the soundwalk recordings in collaboration with a choreographer and dancers. The project has also led to an interactive installation that allows people to “dance” with sounds.[7] Across much of McCartney’s work, in fact, is the emphasis she places on the embodiment in soundscape recordings. As McCartney has explained, ‘‘Soundwalk work is far from detached. The recordist’s perspective is written into the recording...a recording soundwalker is simultaneously an intensely engaged listener, connected by a phonic umbilicus to the surrounding world.”[8] For McCartney, a participatory embodiment in the soundwalk serves as an important source of reconnection. Following Westerkamp, McCartney’s work uses the soundwalking experience to engage audience and participants in asking questions about their relationships to places and their histories, with the walks culminating in an open discussion in which participants reflect on their experience of the walk.[9]
[1] Licht, A. Sound art, beyond music, between categories. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2007.
[2] Norman, Katherine. “Window - And Undecided Sound Essay.” Journal of Sonic Studies, volume 4, no. 1 (May 2013). http://journal.sonicstudies.org/vol04/nr01/a03
[4] Pijanowski, B.C., Record the Earth. Global Soundscape Project, Web. 28 Feb 2016. https://www.recordtheearth.org/
[5] Katz, Mark. “The Amateur in the Age of Mechanical Music.” In The Oxford handbook of sound studies. Pinch, Trevor, and Karin Bijsterveld, eds. Oxford University Press, 2011.
[6] Paquette, David, and Andra McCartney. "Soundwalking and the Bodily Exploration of Places." Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no. 1 (2012): 135.
[7] Paquette, Ibid.
[8] McCartney, Andra. "Soundwalking: creating moving environmental sound narratives." Soundwalking interactions 27 (2010).
[9] Pacquette, Ibid.