Fall Soundwalks – False; Flat; Fake

Soundwalk - September 1

False; Flat; Fake – a soundwalk – 1 Sept 2020

False; Flat; Fake – a soundwalk

A self-guided soundwalk for Soundwalk September.
Created by Jorma Kujala
Launch date: September 1, 2020

This walk was created with Echoes. To get the full experience follow these steps:

  1. Download the app to your smart phone or mobile device from Google Play or the Apple App Store.
  2. Access the walk on Echoes.

If you’d prefer to follow the soundwalk ‘offline’, without following the geo-located recordings on Echoes you can download a copy of the route map here.

DOWNLOAD ON ECHOES VIEW MAP

By focusing on the study of humans in society, A.S. Turberville reminds that historical research brings together human character along with human wills, minds and emotions. Many fields of research, including history, are enveloped in understandings of subjectivity as a cultural artifact that varies with time. Hildegard Westerkamp likens our current environmental, social and economic challenges to an opportunity to reflect on personal (subjective) connections in relation to the present situation, as well as the need for individual actions and responsibility to counteract present day imbalances. Hindsight is indeed twenty-twenty, leading one to wonder how those in the near future will perceive our subjective examinations of the current global situation, as well as the wills, minds and emotions that led to those cultural artifacts.

This map-directed, self-paced “digital soundwalk” stirs up subjective and objective particulate matter, and hopefully also action and responsibility, floating in the spaces and places of two of Vancouver’s rapidly evolving neighbourhoods, the False Creek Flats and Olympic Village. Names changes to this area – from Snauq to False Creek – underscore its interstitial nature, with the ebb and flow of social, cultural, economic, colonial and political forces influencing its spatial configurations. Yet our hold over this land is tenuous at best: as artists Rhonda Weppler and Treveor Mahovsky remind with their public artwork A False Creek, the repercussions of climate change and rising tidal waters could potentially undermine and drown out any short-sighted and thin understanding of humankind’s grip on power and control over this area.

Meandering through highly managed spaces and places, this soundwalk draws scant remnants from this area’s previous lives and histories. Our wills, minds and emotions inform the subjective cultural artifacts that bubble forth as walkers and listeners circulate, energize and engage with notions of home, place and belonging in the interstitial tidal zone among the area’s more current flotsam, jetsam, and detritus.

 

Read more about this Soundwalk

The premise for this walk is quite simple: walkers and listeners are encouraged to engage both with the “live” sounds around them as well as recorded sounds while traversing a designated path that extends westward from the intersection of Great Northern Way and Brunswick Street, through the False Creek Flats and Olympic Village, and ends at Hinge Park in False Creek.

The soundwalk route has been created by placing audio recordings within confined geolocated shapes or “Echoes” along a choreographed walking path, using the Echoes creative app (more information about their products can be found on their website, echoes.xyz). Downloading this free app through Google Play or the Apple App Store will give you access to the soundwalk route.

When you physically move into the geofenced boundary, the content within each Echo will be triggered to play. These audio recordings have been compiled during numerous walks along this route, providing snippets of location-specific soundscapes on various days, and at various times during the day.

Starting at the beginning of the route, move from one Echo (and its audio recording and written prompts) to another along the route, and interact with the sounds and text as you wish. For your reference, a route plan has been uploaded to the Vancouver New Music website, and the numerous Echoes (as well as your location in relation to them) in effect also trace a route that can also be easily seen on the downloaded app.

Feel free to engage with each Echo’s recording on your headphones or ear buds, via a portable speaker, directly through your cell phone, etc. Should you wish to listen to the pre-recorded sounds via headphones or ear buds, it would be beneficial to also linger in the space after the recording has ended, and remove your listening devices in order to listen to the in situ sonic environment, thereby allowing you to compare the two soundscapes. Continue engaging with the live sounds in the neighbourhoods being traversed while moving along the route to the next Echo where another audio recording awaits, and so on. Feel free to hop on and hop off the route as you wish.

A couple of tips: when you enter an Echo, the corresponding circle seen on the app will darken to indicate it has been activated and the audio recording is being played. Tap the Echo’s title bar for more details about the “listening station,” including prompts to guide your engagement with the sounds and the corresponding environment. Tapping the title bar again closes the information box. While the sounds haven’t been set to loop, stepping outside the boundary and then back in will activate the audio clip to play again.

Enjoy your listening experiences!

About Jorma Kujala

Jorma Kujala’s research, carried out through academic and interdisciplinary art practices, are enveloped by theories of identity and the construction of a global cross-cultural “home.” Building on his BFA (Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2010) and MA (Simon Fraser University, 2016), as well as a process-based art practice that includes painting, drawing, and soundwalking, his PhD studies at SFU have advanced his research in the shared knowledge, identity, memory, and social interaction that occur when culture, communication, and social change intersect. He is currently exploring theories relating to embodiment, phenomenology and performance, and how the human interacts with the non-human, predominantly through his sensory ethnography research, including soundwalking. He also investigates repetition and re-enactment and the bodily interplay between individual, senses, and environment.

This soundwalk is part of Soundwalk September.

Soundwalk September