Spring Soundwalks – May 21 + 28, 2023
Prog-Walk: Ambient Listening at False Creek (East)
Sunday, May 21, 2023; 2–4pm
Led by Helena Krobath
Meeting location: At the Birds sculpture in Olympic Village Square (between Manitoba and Salt Streets) [map]
Bus/sky train stops, along with pay parking/meter parking are located nearby
FREE
Accessibility information: The walk consists of self-directed exploration and opportunities to sit, with short stretches of walking between locations. Each section of the walk is wheelchair accessible.
This 2-hour time frame includes approximately 1 hour of walking plus an introductory and closing discussions.
This soundwalk structures the Olympic Village area of False Creek into a series of ambient listening stages. Each stage will include an optional prompt for imaginative ways the space can be heard.
False Creek’s identity is layered over millennia of Indigenous history and decades of urban pivoting. Originally a clamming, fishing, and hunting cornucopia, it has since been used as heavy industry zone, working class neighbourhood, Expo-86 site, Olympic Village, encampment area, and residential tower block. After a brief spell as an empty condo “ghost town”, its current situation intersects luxury, poverty, nature, and industry.
This soundwalk approaches the former Olympic Village area as a theatrical site that presents a unique diorama and tricky sense of space. Its rambling design invites playfulness as the complex almost surreality frames out visual and sonic nooks, depths of field, and industrial/natural backdrops in relation to itself. Pleasing angles and anonymous paths invite a touristic sensibility, while tensions between proscribed and desired uses also play out. From this context – the space as complicated recreation zone – we will encounter listening opportunities, ambient environments, and audio-visual contrasts.
BYO listening tools/field recorders if you wish!
Download the Soundwalk listening prompts here.
Helena Krobath is a multimedia artist and educator who has practiced soundwalking since 2015. Helena’s sonic work, The World is Gone, This is the World was recently part of Decoy Gallery’s Chaotic Rhythms exhibition. Helena also created the experimental interactive soundwalk, “MEH: Museum of Extratemporal Harkening,” with collaborator Brady Marks for the 2022 Walking Festival of Sound. Helena has produced episodes of the Soundscape Show on Co-op Radio, among other radio and podcast work, and has created audio arts and soundscape compositions for several exhibitions and compilations. Helena is interested in narrative forms, sensory experience, and imaginative potential.
Top image: Guilhem Vellut via Wikimedia Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Two Decades of Listening
Sunday, May 28, 2023; 2–3pm
Led by Jamie Dolinko
Meeting location: In front of the outdoor fountain at the Vancouver Museum entrance, 1100 Chestnut Street [map]
FREE
Two Decades of Listening, led by Vancouver Soundwalk Collective member Jamie Dolinko, is a Soundwalk that explores the busy and vibrant Kitsilano Beach neighborhood.
Because our visual sense is so predominant, it often prevents us from experiencing the often overlooked but persistent soundscape that accompanies us at all times. Soundwalking is an intentional effort to focus on this continuous symphony, and grants us the opportunity to reflect on the present moment as it happens.
This 20th anniversary Soundwalk will follow the footsteps of the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective’s earliest event, exploring the audio environment around Hadden Park below Cornwall Avenue in Kitsilano.
The walk will take approximately one hour and as is our custom, will be done in silence. There will be an opportunity to debrief and discuss our experience afterwards, and all are welcome.
The walk will take place rain or shine so please dress appropriately for the weather.
After studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Jamie Dolinko received her M.F.A. in Photography and Computer-Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1992.
Dolinko’s work has been shown at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), the Velan Centro D’arte Contemporanea in Torino, the Run Run Shaw Creative Media Center in Hong Kong, and David Wisdom’s slide shows at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Dolinko’s photographs are the subjects of a short documentary film, “Fragments of Proximity” by Rafi Spivak at the NFB, she was the winner of the Capture Photography Festival Canada Line SkyTrain Competition, and she frequently leads soundwalks with the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective, most recently featured on CBC Radio 1 in 2021
Dolinko currently maintains her practice from her studio in a 1910 heritage building in Chinatown, and loves walking through cities big and small.
Image: Jamie Dolinko.
Join members of the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective on a unique, guided, listening tour. A Soundwalk is a silent walk along a planned route to experience a location’s ambiance and underlying rhythms. All too often the sounds of the environment pass by unnoticed because of our uncanny ability to shut them out. A Soundwalk invites participants to actively listen, opening ears and consciousness to the complex orchestration that the environment is composing at all times. It is a musical-sonic adventure that reveals the banal to be extraordinary!
Soundwalks are co-presented with the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective.
Soundwalks are FREE and open to the public. Soundwalks happen rain or shine, so participants should be sure to wear appropriate footwear and clothing for any weather condition.
