SOUNDWALK <3
Where:
M43 Bus Stop, Berlin-Ostkreuz
https://maps.app.goo.gl/wV532gmPnau3jxST9
When:
Saturday, 06/04/24 12.00 - 18.00 (Edit: You can do the walk whenever you find the time <3)
Bring:
Your Phone and a Pair of Headphones
Actively experiencing an area’s past, present and possible future through the medium of soundwalking while highlighting an issue that may impact these. In this case: Ostkreuz to Elsenbrücke, Berlin-Friedrichshain and the proposed A100 extension.
Method:
Soundwalk looping from Ostkreuz via Markgrafendamm and Kynaststraße back to Ostkreuz. 24 minute sound piece to accompany walk, listened to on smartphone via headphones, playback through streaming site (Soundcloud), link to which provided via QR-Code. Route provided through printed graphic score acting as abstraction of map, to be distributed amongst participants before walk.
Link to Soundpiece:
https://on.soundcloud.com/XzGjfxufBxBfJN7c7
Some more In-depth information on the project:
The Idea - Initial Stage
Sharing how I came to make the things I make and why I think of music the way I do would be too broad a subject to talk about here and I’m not sure I could even tell you exactly why but I want to mention David Toop’s 1995 book ‘Ocean of Sound’ specifically Chapter 12 in which he talks about the World Soundscape Project, digital archaeology, plunderphonics and other concepts which are central to the way I create.
I also want to mention dub music here which may seem a little strange to talk about in a soundwalk context, but listening to the mind-boggling atmospheres created from reverbs, delays and echos by people like King Tubby, Scientist, Mad Professor, Lee Perry or Dennis Bovell influenced so many of my musical influences and really shaped how I work with sound.
I have been interested in the concept of soundwalks for about a year now and wrote a piece for a walk which took place in Treptower Park, Berlin in the late spring of 2023. The walk was free form, so no map/score to guide the route participants take with a twenty minute long piece made from field recordings to accompany it. As I did more research on soundwalks I began thinking about how a community could be engaged and awareness raised towards issues affecting certain areas; effectively soundwalks as a way to engage in community activism and to work on something which really holds value to me and others. I had heard about the proposed A100 extension because I live in Berlin-Friedrichshain, an area which would be greatly affected by the extension of the A100 city-highway, with multiple local cultural institutions facing closure because of it. This got me thinking about using sound as a lens to to draw focus to how our city is changing and that active community engagement is needed to push for the city to develop in an environmentally and culturally sustainable way.
These thoughts were the seed out of which this project has grown and I began researching concepts, formats and approaches to strengthen the idea.
Site Visits and Field Recording
The first thing for me to do and this is something I did throughout the project development was to really familiarising myself with the area: What does the area sound like? What do I see? What stands out? This also meant travelling further down south to Neukölln where the highway currently ends and is already in the process of being extended. I wanted to familiarise myself with the area around the current A100 and the construction site to hear what the future for my Kiez might sound/look like. I did this by doing multiple soundwalks at different locations and collecting field recordings with my phone and trusty Sennheiser Ambeo headphones. The recordings I made on these walks were my main sound piece ‘ingredients’. I also began collecting old city maps and studying them which inspired the approach I took to coming up with a ‘graphic score’ for the walk. And of course, doing research on the A100 extension, for which I found official material pretty hard to come by; it seems to me like the authorities don’t really have much of a plan what’s going on with the project themselves. Here’s a good article which summarises the main points I came across; also check the A100 protest group website https://bi-a100.de/ for more information on the topic.
The Idea - Development
I think it makes sense at this point to outline how I plan for the project to go in a little more depth:
People are invited to participate in a soundwalk which starts near Berlin Ostkreuz station and loops down Markgrafendamm past //:aboutblank, Club Ost and Renate (all institutions are likely to be affected by the highway extension and face closure), crossing under the railway bridge on Alt-Stralau over to Kynaststraße and from there back up to Ostkreuz. The walk ends where it started and takes around 25 minutes to complete. The route will be provided to participants in the form of a graphic score ‘zine’ which contains QR codes with two links: 1) Link to sound piece to accompany walk which participants listen to on their own headphones (I will provide a small number of headphones and MP3 players to make sure people without smartphones/headphones can also do the walk) 2) Link to this website for further information on the project.
Influences
Now I want to mention some practitioners, books and musical inspirations which really influenced how I developed the project further. I’ll break this up into sound piece, soundwalk, graphic score and conceptual/philosophical inspirations. Most of these inspirations shaped my approach across all of these four areas and I won’t go into detail as to what each of these entails, see this more as a reading list/summary for further research should you wish to do so.
Conceptual/Philosophical Influences
Hyperobjects - Timothy Morton (2013)
The Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion - Tobias Armborst (2014)
Time Wars - Jeremy Rifkin (1989)
Post Capitalist Desires - Mark Fischer (2021)
The Political Possibility of Sound - Salomé Voegelin (2019)
The Flexible City - Tom Bergevoet and Maarten van Tuijl (2023)
Graphic Score Influences
The RSVP Cycles - Lawrence Halprin (1970)
Fluxus Movement Graphic Scores
Framework 3 - Mads Emil Nielsen, Katja Gretzinger, Nicola Ratti (2023, arbitrary)
Doodling
City Maps
Soundwalk Influences
The World Soundscape Project
Electrical Walks - Christina Kubisch (2004-now)
Hildegard Westerkamp
Janet Cardiff ‘Walks'
Going Out - Elena Biserna (2023)
Sound Piece Influences
Night Traffic - Paul Lansky (1990, Homebrew)
Kits Beach Soundwalk - Hildegard Westerkamp (1990, n.o.l.)
Ben Bondy - Ben Bondy (2022, Quiet Time Tapes)
Falling Water Lullaby - Perila, Ulla (2021, n.o.l.)
Winterbloom Too - Phill Niblock (1990, XI Records)
Interaction of Color - Josef Albers (2014)
Kosmischer Pitch - Jan Jelinek (2005, Faitiche)
If you’ve read this far, thank you! If you have any futher questions send an email to: mariushaysmith@gmail.com