Spring Soundwalks
Soundtalk: Expand & Contract: Acoustic Spaces Under COVID19
Sunday, May 31, 2020; 2–3:30pm (PDT)
Led by Helena Krobath and Brady Marks
We recommend that you use headphones or good speakers in order to have the highest quality listening experience.
Expand & Contract is a listening experience that invited participants to consider how acoustic worlds, and our senses of space, are inter-playing with COVID19 conditions. While acoustic space is wider and more enjoyable in some situations (if not eerie), other zones are under pressure, like hospitals and shipping hubs. Can we imagine a new balance, beyond the crisis? What connections can we make by listening now?
Together we explored prompts for listening in place, before hearing a set of soundscape recordings from contributors in different locations. What is present, absent, familiar, new? What contrasts and resonates with our individual listening locations? Brief discussion will follow (total time 1.5 hours).
Listen to the Expand & Contract soundscape field recordings:
Soundwalks are co-presented with the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective.
Soundwalk from Home – Covid19 Version
By Hildegard Westerkamp
Read some thoughts on listening in our current times from Hildegard Westerkamp. Download Soundwalk from Home Covid 19 Version, April 2020 .
#soundchalk: Self-guided Soundwalks in Vancouver + Nelson, BC
Designed by Jorma Kujala, Heather McDermid and prOphecy sun
Starting May 22 for as long as the chalk lasts!
Follow a route, or find some soundmarks and upload your photos and sounds to social media using the hashtag #soundchalk
Has the chalk been washed away by rain? No problem – view and download the route maps below.
It’s time for Spring Soundwalks, and although we can’t gather to share these listening experiences we invite you to take part in a special offline activity! Take in your sonic environment as you stroll along these DIY soundwalk routes in Vancouver and Nelson.
While you are following self-guided routes please be sure to remain aware of your surroundings at all times, maintain a safe physical distancen from others, obey all traffic signals and cross intersections only when it is safe.
Intermissions
Start from Britannia Community Services Centre (1661 Napier Street – Napier at Commercial Drive)
Duration: approx. 30-40 minutes
Created by Heather McDermid
Explore the varied sounds of this vibrant neighbourhood criss-crossing residential, commercial and industrial zones. Restaurants, festivals, schools and theatres have gone quiet – for now. Which of the usual sounds remain? Are any sounds amplified through the absence of others?
View the route here or download it as a PDF.
Photos by Heather McDermid.
Connections: West End Vancouver
Start from Comox and Burrard (in front of St. Paul’s Hospital)
Duration: approx. 30-40 minutes
Created by Jorma Kujala
We are one. We are connected while remaining unique. This soundwalk and accompanying “soundchalk” prompts encourages walkers and listeners to engage on audible and sensual levels with spaces, places and realities in a small portion of Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood. Listening and sensing stops offer pause to consider the infinite aspects of energy and life itself pulsing through people and nature as one meanders along streets, parks, and institutions. Engage. Feel. Know.
View the route here or download it as a PDF.
Between the alleys of Nelson
Start from Carbonate Street and Hall Street, Nelson, BC
Duration: approx. 45 minutes
Created by prOphecy sun
Listen to the sounds of Nelson on this self-guided soundwalk through town anIn this edition of DIY Soundwalk, artist prOphecy sun encourages participants to listen to watch Nelson’s urban sounds by traversing through alleyways, up and down staircases, over bridges, along hidden paths and beside a community pool and back
View the route here or download it as a PDF
Photos courtesy of Darren Fleet and prOphecy sun.
Watch highlights from Soundwalk Sunday: Playing Burrard Bridge with Sound, led by Matthew Ariaratnam, Elizabeth Ellis, Julie Hammond and Helena Krobath. September 1, 2019.
