Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural Geography

Memoryscape How Audio Walks Can DeepenOur Sense of Place by Integrating Art OralHistory and Cultural Geography

Toby ButlerRoyal Holloway University of London

Abstract

This article is concerned with the history and practice of creating sound walks orlsquomemoryscapesrsquo outdoor trails that use recorded sound and spoken memory playedon a personal stereo or mobile media to experience places in new ways In thisrelatively new and rapidly evolving field the author brings together works frommusic sound art oral history and cultural geography as a starting point tounderstanding how such trails can give us a more sophisticated and nuancedexperience of places He suggests that this might offer some exciting opportunitiesfor practice-based multimedia research and teaching

Introduction

In the last 50 years the audio guide has generally been an experience reservedfor the museum or art gallery Visitors have become accustomed to beingoffered a set of headphones when they arrive in the exhibition foyer andthe audio guide has become a well-established means of offering lsquoexpertrsquointerpretation In recent years my research interest has been in trails thatuse recorded sound and voice to interpret the outside world of the historicalcultural and physical landscape Until very recently there were only veryisolated examples of using recorded sound or voice in an outside setting ndashmost commonly compositions by musicians and experimental sound artistsBut now the popularity of MP3 players and a crash in the price of theequipment and software necessary to record and edit professional qualitysound and voice has opened up new realms of opportunity for people tonarrate layer and intervene in the experience of moving through places Asmall industry is developing in creating audio trails delivered through portablemedia players as a result of commercial enterprise sponsorship or statefunding (Blue Brolly London Audio Walks 2006 iTour website 2005 SoundTravel Audio Guides 2006 Soundwalk website 2005)

The technology necessary for access to media content that is geographicallyrelevant to the userrsquos location is also developing rapidly In 2010 the newGalileo global positioning system (GPS) will be ready allowing civilians to

copy 2007 The AuthorJournal Compilation copy 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Geography Compass 13 (2007) 360ndash372 101111j1749-8198200700017x

locate themselves in the world to within a metre without cost beyond thereceiving equipment and many new mobile phones already contain GPSreceiving chips (Amos 2005) Computer manufacturers and softwaredevelopers like Hewlett-Packard have invested heavily in research anddevelopment work for outdoor mobile computing ndash including roaminglocation-based computer games that can geographically locate players in realtime using GPS Content will be increasingly sophisticated and dynamic ndashit can already be varied according to other real-world sensors such as heartrate direction and light using bio-mapping techniques (Nold 2006) Traildesigners are also gaining critical recognition In May 2006 the first everinteractivity British Academy of Film and Television Arts award went to aBBC production team for creating a series of mobile phone delivered audiowalks linked to the Coast documentary series

There is tremendous potential for practitioners of many disciplines toexperiment in this exciting and rapidly developing area and I hope thisarticle will provide some inspiration to do so I will begin by providing somehistorical context to this kind of located media by describing some of theexperiments that musicians and artists have made with sound in the outsideenvironment over the last century Some more recent artistic practicehas included voice and memory and I will go on to examine how recordedmemory or oral history might offer opportunities to create moresophisticated and nuanced experiences that might incorporate both mobileand sedentary conceptions of places and their cultural history I havedeliberately included many examples of practice including my own in thehope that it might inspire people to learn through doing and draw on someof the creative models here to inform their own work and teaching

How Musicians and Artists Developed the Walk of Art

Throughout the 20th century musicians and artists have engaged with themultisensory experience of place and they have attempted to pioneer newways communicating with audiences in a multisensory way and sometimesat outside locations This is therefore a particularly rich seam of work toconsider in this context Sound art is a vast area of different practices and inmany respects defies generalisation although an attempt to map out thehistory of the sound art movement has now been made (Kahn 1999) Muchof the art of noise and sound might be interpreted historically as a responseto the rapidly changing character of modern urban life Modernitytransformed the soundscape of everyday life with the sounds of car enginesfans and motors in all but the most remote areas It has been argued that thischange in amount and type of sound (or noise a more disparaging word forsounds that are judged to be unpleasant or out of place) has accumulatedsteadily since the early modern period and has had subtle but major effectson conceptions of place and identity In the past the church bell had ageographical significance created lsquoauditory communitiesrsquo and helped to

copy 2007 The Author Geography Compass 13 (2007) 360ndash372 101111j1749-8198200700017xJournal Compilation copy 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Memoryscape audio walks 361

define identity and structure relationships (Garrioch 2003) The bell waseclipsed by the sound of the factory whistle the motor and industry as wellas sound with less spatial significance television the radio the iPod AldousHuxley declared the 20th century the Age of NoiselsquoPhysical noise mentalnoise and noise of desire ndash we hold historyrsquos record for all of themrsquo (Huxley1945) Little wonder that there were some major reactions to this newpredominantly urban soundscape ranging from noise abatement societiesto the invention of new sound proofing materials and techniques that havegreatly shaped modern architectural and building practice Yet it would bea mistake to regard the historical changes in everyday sound as simply adestructive process of urban noisiness destroying traditional harmony AsThompson has demonstrated in The Soundscape of Modernity there was alsoa creative side to this process ndash musicians and engineers constructed newcultures out of the noise of the modern world inside offices music hallscinemas and across airwaves (Thompson 2002) Artists also began to try toincorporate these powerful auditory aspects into their interpretations of theworld they simply could not be ignored

Throughout the 20th century musicians experimented with noise TheItalian futurist Luigi Russolo co-wrote The Art of Noises Futurist Manifesto(1913) in which he declared lsquoWe delight much more in combining in ourthoughts the noises of trams of automobile engines of carriages and brawlingcrowds than in hearing again the Eroica or the Pastoralersquo and lsquolet us crossa large modern capital with our ears more attentive than eyesrsquo (Russolo andPratella 1967) Russolo delighted in the latest industrial noise and even thenoise of war His compositions were performed inside with speciallydesigned instruments to recreate the outside noises of modernity Russoloargued that his performances sensitised people to the music of everydaysound He claimed that after four of five rehearsals his musicians lsquotook greatpleasure in following the noises of trams automobiles and so on in thetraffic outside And they verified with amazement the variety of pitch theyencountered in these noisesrsquo (Russolo and Pratella 1967) This was not asentiment shared by many people some of whom actively campaignedagainst loud noise as being detrimental to health By 1930 the noiseabatement movement in had gained enough political momentum to set upa Noise Abatement Commission in New York that began to measure outsidenoise with scientific instruments It found terrific noise American cities fromriveters on construction sites subways factories and the new amplifiedmusic Zoning laws and public health acts were used to control some of thisnoise but it seems that there was little impact overall Instead and partlybecause of this failure of city authorities to regulate noise buildings andparticularly concert halls were specifically designed to keep outside noiseoutside (Thompson 2002 168)

It was not long before musicians deliberately brought lsquonoisersquo into theconcert hall but it took American composer John Cage and his notoriouswork 4prime33Prime also known as the lsquosilent piecersquo (1952) to introduce the concert

362 Memoryscape audio walks


hall to geographically located outside noise The performance of this workwas held in a concert hall with a performer sitting at the piano The pianistwould count the time in three movements making absolutely no sound Itis customary for audiences to remain quietly respectful in concert halls forthe duration of the performance and the performer is instructed to remainquiet in all respects As the realisation dawns that the performer is not goingto perform the listening attention of the audience inevitably drew to thesounds around them the movements and noises of the area outside the halland any breathing coughing or shuffling that happened inside it As a siteof meaning the concert hall is transformed from highly ritualised and (self)controlled area into a dynamic complex place where potentially anythingcould happen

Since Cagersquos experiments there have been a myriad of practitioners thathave used sound to draw attention to the urban landscape Max Neuhauscomposed a series of walks between 1966 and 1976 the audience wouldmeet outside the concert hall where they would have their hands stampedwith the word lsquoLISTENrsquo and they would then follow Neuhaus (who saidnothing) around the nearby streets where they would be led to sonicallyinteresting areas like under flyovers (Foundation 2005) In this work thelocal soundscape takes centre stage and potentially anything might happenalthough the route is authored to increase the chance of an interestingacoustic lsquohappeningrsquo Sound artists as well as musicians have continued tobring audiences outside conventional sites of cultural consumption toappreciate local and situated sound Bill Fontana for example installedSound Island (1994) in the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in which he broadcastlive sounds from 16 places in the city to a platform above the monumentBy treating the landscape as a living source of musical information he triesto challenge old ideas of noise and encourage people to appreciate the soundsthey live with every day in a new way Fontana has found that he has hadto work outside the museum or art gallery ndash which he describes as institutionsdevoted to the visual retinal experience lsquoThe idea of placing a soundsculpture inside a museum space which cannot be seen with the eyes is anapparent contradiction which is why so few museums have ever beeninterested in the type of work I am doingrsquo he says (Fontana 2004)

Canadian artist Janet Cardiff also attempted to bring the art of the galleryout on to the street In 1996 Cardiff first used an audio walk as an exhibitionat the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark Only a standardmuseum label with Janet Cardiff rsquos name was in the gallery to mark thepresence of lsquoLouisiana Walk 14rsquo Nearby a desk manned by a securityguard dispensed headsets But rather than leading a tour around theexhibition the audio instructions lead the listener through a nearby exit tostart an outdoor adventure

Do you hear me I want you to walk with me through the garden Letrsquos gooutside Go down the stairs Try to walk to the sounds of the footsteps so wecan stay together (quoted by Scott 1999 11)



Cardiff went on to make a similar trail around Brick Lane in LondonThe Missing Voice (case study B) (Cardiff 1999) This work has been describedin depth elsewhere (Pinder 2001) but the most important thing thatdifferentiates Cardiff rsquos walk from the other authors and artists I havementioned is the embodied nature of the experience as the artwork isessentially inside your head Most of the narration is in the present tenseand you are encouraged to follow the pace of the narrators recorded footsteps(lsquoso we can stay togetherrsquo) In addition to this layer of virtual reality Cardiffrecorded soundtracks of her walking along these streets with binauralmicrophones These are stereo microphones that are usually worn in yourears (or placed on a dummy head) to record sound that is more faithful tothe way the human ear listens The effect can be startling when listening tobinaural recordings with earphones because the spatiality of sound isrecreated ndash a footstep or a siren wail can appear to come from whicheverdirection it was recorded

Cardiff uses multitrack recording to create layers of sound that run at thesame time footsteps street sounds her voice and artificial sound effects ormusic might all play at the same time When I tried Cardiff rsquos Missing Voicetrail the effect was very startling ndash walking up a quiet lane I had failed tonotice the bell tower of a nearby church on the horizon until the recordedsound of the bell suddenly alerted me to it Sometimes unusual sounds wereintroduced that seemed to have nothing to do with the area Shortly afterthe bell ringing the quiet lane became extremely disturbing as sounds ofgunfire air-raid sirens and strangely helicopter noise came from someunidentified war zone The sounds of war create a dream world perhapsor another place on the streets of London Several themes in theWhitechapel walk appear in Louisiana Walk 14 a murder mystery typeatmosphere apocalyptic helicopter sounds a scared woman walking alongdark paths Cardiff is an international artist who develops her work atWhitechapel but it begs the question of how site-specific Cardiffrsquos workreally is Of course there are specific reference points to the environmentthe walk uses specific buildings with powerful effect (a library a church andrailway station) but her concern is more with the psychological and theimaginative than an engagement with local history or culture The pace ofthe walk through the streets around Brick Lane is quick for me theneighbourhood became a backdrop to her cinematic style of narrative muchof which could be heard along any city street with little ill effect

A more grounded example can be found a few miles away In 2003Graeme Miller produced an ambitious work called Linked a trail that runsalongside the M11 link road in Hackney the site of the biggest antiroadprotest Britain had ever seen (Miller 2003) This sound trail is made up ofrecorded memories from people who had lost their homes in the processof the motorway construction broadcast from lamp posts along the route(the trail is still up and running ndash see wwwlinkedm11info for moreinformation) Miller lived in the area for many years and in contrast to



Cardiff rsquos imaginative style his work is exceptionally grounded He choseto use a variety of voices from the locality of each lamppost that gives hiswork a geographical and historical weight to the experience that can havesome powerful effects when it is overlaid on the present (Butler and Miller2005) The interviews made for this work were informed by oral historymethodology and they were archived at the Museum of London In Linkedthe fields of art and oral history collide and it is oral history and itsrelationship with place that I would like to consider next

Connecting Place in Oral History

Oral historians have been gathering memories of places for decadesResearchers from all kinds of disciplines (eg journalism anthropologypsychology and cultural studies) record interviews but oral history has afirmly established practice of archiving recordings in museums and librariesthat are usually made available to the public There has also been animportant lsquograss rootsrsquo momentum to the oral history movement that existsoutside academia and creates a large body of books and CD recordingscreated by and for local people about their community In these respectsoral historians work with a public audience in mind and have a great dealof experience in publishing or broadcasting memories in an accessible wayFor this reason I will now briefly consider the potential of oral history tonarrate and geographically locate human experience

Traditionally oral history projects that have been concerned with placeshave tended to focus geographically either on stable work-place environ-ments or on stable residential communities ndash an oral history of workers ina particular factory for example or a particular village (Blythe 1973 Bourne1912 Evans 1962) This work tends to take a fairly straightforward idea ofplace as a common sense way to limit the work for example one factoryvillage or parish boundary is picked as an arbitrary means of deciding whatshould and should not be included This approach can work well in amemoryscape as it gives an obvious coherence and theme (the locality) toa trail In Kings Cross London for example Kings Cross voices oral historyproject created an oral history sound trail around a community located atArgyle Square near Kings Cross railway station (The Argyle Square SoundTrail 2006) The problem is that places are not static people move leavevisit and pass through Over time places and populations change with theseasons the markets and the ages yet the stories tend to come from thosethat have stayed a long time in one area and can give the impression thatcommunities are far more stable than they actually are Other projects putmore of an emphasis on shared experience such as the Moving Here projectthat collected memories of migration organised racially between CaribbeanIrish South Asian and Jewish ethnic groups in England (Moving Here 2003)

Other oral historians have developed ways of exploring networks or pathsbetween people who might scarcely know each other but share common



ground of some kind In Working Chicago journalist and oral historian StudsTerkel investigated American attitudes to work by interviewing peoplealong a chain of relationships For example for a chapter concerned withtelephony he might interview a receptionist who answers calls a telephoneengineer who installs telephone systems someone who manufactures telegraphpoles the chief executive of a telephone company a telephone helplineworker (Terkel 1974) The technique can also be applied at communitylevel with place-based interviewing In some cases the community or groupdoes not actually have to exist as an entity in the first place In IslingtonLondon for example an oral history trail is being constructed with peoplewho live and work along a road the A1 which runs through the boroughThe stated aim of the trail is to tell lsquothe history and heritage of the A1 astold by the people who live and work along itrsquo in part as a community-building exercise (Timothy 2005 19) Edward Platt also used a routewayin Leadville A Biography of the A40 (Platt 2001) He knocked on the doorsof residents in Western Avenue recording the words of anyone who waswilling to discuss the road and their lives next to it Using something like aroad as an organising principle to connect people is working with a morefractured perception of urban space which does not necessarily coincidewith historical planning government or place-name perceptions of geographyThe technique uses paths routes networks and trajectories through a citytalking to a series of people who might not ordinarily meet or considerthemselves a part of a group or a community This is a geographical way ofexploring the connecting power of oral history which Thompson has arguedis a unique quality in comparison to other historical sources

We need to keep at the forefront the connecting value of oral history and oraltestimony That to me seems to be its unique quality oral history is a connectingvalue which moves in all sorts of different directions It connects the old and theyoung the academic world and the world outside but more specifically it allowsus to make connections in the interpretation of history for example betweendifferent places or different spheres or different phases of life (Thompson 1994 11)

Place Mobility and Memory Geography

To better understand how this connecting value of memory and oral historymight work in the context of a walk through a particular place it is worthconsidering what is meant by place which has played an important role ingeographical theory From the 1970s the phenomenological ideas of Yi-FuTuan and Edward Relph have been very influential (Cresswell 2004) Theyargued that humans get to know the world through place and thereforetopophilia the lsquoaffective bond between people and placersquo was a fundamentallyimportant part of human experience (Tuan 1974) Relph suggested that oneof the fundamental aspects of being human was to live in a world that isfilled with significant places because place determines our experience (Relph1976) Place home and lsquorootsrsquo in these terms are a fundamental human need



and they shape our cultural identity This way of thinking something that anthro-pologist Liisa Malkki has described as lsquosedentary metaphysicsrsquo underpinsmuch geographical and cultural thought territorialises identity into common-place assumptions about property region and nation This definition of placeis not without its difficulties For example Tim Cresswellrsquos work on thetramp in the USA has explored the idea that such conceptions can lead todualistic thoughts about people that are mobile or displaced such as trampstravellers or refugees as pathologically dangerous (Cresswell 2001 14ndash19)

In his latest book On the Move Cresswell explores some more positivevaluations of mobility that have developed in social and cultural theory ndash akind of lsquonomadic metaphysicsrsquo To summarise very briefly Saidrsquos work onthe shifting nature of nationhood de Certeaursquos thoughts on mobility andNigel Thriftrsquos work on affective and empathetic ways that humans encounterplace explore different aspects of how our fundamentally mobile humanityexperiences places that might be regarded as ever-changing flowing andmore complex than rigid conceptions of national or local identity mightsuggest As a result many geographers have been exploring more activesensory self-reflective and embodied methodologies These ideas can beused in progressive and liberating ways although as Cresswell suggests themetaphors of mobility are not without their own limitations and politics(Certeau 1984 Cresswell 2006 Said 1978Thrift 1996 2000 2004)

It seems to me that there are parallels and strengths to be drawn fromboth schools of thought which are by no means mutually exclusive Theartists discussed above challenged traditional ways of seeing and listening bymoving performance and display outside conventional cultural spaces thatoften deliberately insulate the visitor from their geographical environmentOral historians have also attempted to break free from rigid place-basedconceptions of what makes up a community These might both be seen aslsquomobilersquo practices that try to break free from sedentary ideas of what makesa performance space or a culture Yet in both there is also a strong elementof the sedentary or the topophilic The specificity of place can actually playa much more important role in performances that actively engage withoutside settings and use everyday sound and noise These practitioners aretrying to encourage people to make more connections with place ratherthan reject the situated idea of place outright In terms of oral historyexploring alternative networks or paths through a community reveals morecomplex connections between people place and their identity but placehome and roots still have a fundamentally important role

You Can Talk the Talk ndash Can You Walk the Walk

To further illustrate this point and to demonstrate the kind of practice-basedresearch method that I am arguing for I will end this article by mentioningmy own experiment with creating audio trails inspired by much of thework mentioned above I created two audio walks of my own that



Fig 1 A group of partially sighted people experiencing a memoryscape walk at GreenwichLondon

incorporated elements of both sound art and oral history along the banks ofthe River Thames in London (Butler 2005) The walks featured editedinterview recordings with 30 different people concerning their life on theriver and an accompanying trail map showed where to play each trackalong the Thames Path The interviews were carefully edited with back-ground sound recorded binaurally from the path The audio walks weremade freely available for download to an MP3 player from a website(wwwmemoryscapeorguk) and a CD version was sold by the shops at theMuseum of London and Tourist Information Centres Several thousandpeople have encountered these walks in some way and I think it would beuseful to consider how this discussion might translate to the public realm

I surveyed over 150 people who tried the memoryscape audio trails (Figure 1)People responded extremely positively to the experience of walking andhearing local voices in situ They particularly liked the authenticity of hearinglsquorealrsquo people rather than a narrator The stories and memories they heardrelated to the landscape in some way and creating these connections orlinks to place seem to have had led to a feeling of closeness or rootednessfor some people One newcomer to London wrote lsquonow I know a sense ofa beginning attachmentrsquo Another walker who had recently moved to thearea described the process beautifully as lsquodeepening my attachment to theriver Like roots shooting off into the soilrsquo I think it is interesting that



mobility and rootedness seems to be able to coexist so readily like anaboriginal songline the stories are given a profound geographical presence(Chatwin 1987)

This was not negated by the mobile practice of hearing the memories ona walk ndash in fact the scope afforded by moving through several miles oflandscape and hearing so many memories seemed to increase the chanceof some connection relevant to the individual concerned being made Itwas also apparent that the physicality and sensation of walking in the localityis a powerful part of the sensation of being connected to place Some walkersreported that it helped them to lsquofeel closerrsquo and more empathetic to thepeople they were listening to as they were subject to the same surroundingsBeing in the landscape also helped people to imagine the episodes in thepast that were described and feel that they were physically participating inthe experience ndash one said lsquoit makes one feel as though one is a part of whatis going onrsquo This seemed to be a particularly embodied experience areviewer wrote

As one listens one encounters not the hidden but in fact a riverine pentimentothe temporal past re-emerges from the depths of recorded memory to mergewith onersquos contemporary spatial experience of the Thames as it is now (Friedman2006 107)

The metaphor of the pentimento ndash in oil painting the fragmentary tracesof an underlying picture such as an earlier painting on the same canvasshowing through wonderfully captured the conceptual idea of the interviewsand the sound colliding different temporal and spatial presents together (thepresent of the memory the interview the background sound recording andthe listener)

The range of voices and memories used also afforded the listener a pluraland multilayered impression of place Several people talked about theexperience adding a new reality or a new dimension of reality to the existinglandscape Furthermore anyone who visited the riverside landscape againcould use those links to remember something of the stories that they heardas one walker put itlsquomemoryscape has made me consider the part the riverhas played in so many peoplersquos lives I think about this whenever I visit theriver since listening to the recordingrsquo In this way perhaps the memoryscapecan mimic the way our memories seem to work in the brain ndash it is an activemobile process connecting often disparate things in an intensely creativeway to make sense of our past present and the future

Conclusion

I have tried to demonstrate through the various examples of practice-basedwork above that the audio sound walk or memoryscape might offer us anexciting way of creating more nuanced embodied complex multisensorymethods of experiencing and representing our surroundings Walking soundartwork and some of the experiments in oral history practice mentionedcopy 2007 The Author Geography Compass 13 (2007) 360ndash372 101111j1749-8198200700017xJournal Compilation copy 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


above might be seen as a part of the lsquonomadic metaphysicalrsquo school ofthought that is excited by the possibilities of using sound (noise) memoryand place in more fluid complex way Yet this practice does not seem tonegate other more situated and sedentary feelings of identity and belongingIn fact the use of located sound and located memory can engender deepfeelings of rootedness or being in place and the geographical setting seemsto encourage understanding and a feeling of inclusiveness even with listenersthat do not know the area that they are experiencing

I believe that this kind of location-based mobile media could have arange of possibilities for geographical and public projects Most obviouslyit has great potential for geographers to interpret and curate the outsideworld to the public as well as their students The excitement and immersionof a field trip experience could be emulated for a much wider audiencePhysical and human geographers will be able to create understandings aboutspecific places that could be delivered in the field Whatever technologiesevolve they will all need one thing ndash interesting located (local) contentand geographers should be well placed to meet that demand But the mediumwill have much more to offer than a purely expert-led experience valuableas that might be Building on the technique and inclusive tradition of oralhistory I think there is also tremendous potential for participative workwith student and community groups to co-author complex multivocalexperiences that can quite literally give people a voice in the interpretationof their neighbourhood that are listened to in an active way As it becomeseasier for individuals to author and distribute their own interpretations ofplace people will need practical training and access to the means of productionto make their own located media experience Thousands of hands ndash andvoices ndash will be needed to build what Hayden Lorimer might call an lsquoactivearchiversquo of place (Lorimer 2003) There will be a whole host of ethical andpractical issues to grapple with but this surely could be a great opportunityfor educators from a variety of disciplines to create mobile but deeply spatiallyengaged practice that can explore multilayered and plural histories of place

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor David Gilbert at Royal Holloway andCathy Ross and Annette Day at the Museum of London for their help andsupport with my research and constructing the memoryscape project (thewalks can still be downloaded from wwwmemoryscapeorguk) Thisresearch was supported by an ESRC CASE studentship award noPTA-033-2002-00039

Biography

Toby Butler is the author of two sound walks lsquoDockersrsquo and lsquoDriftingrsquoalong the River Thames in London They can be experienced online at



wwwmemoryscapeorguk He is a visiting fellow at the University of EastLondon and is currently working on a series of sound trails with communitiesaround the Royal Docks

Note

Correspondence address Toby Butler Jervis Bay Barden Road Tonbridge Kent TN9 1UJUK E-mail tobybutlerboltbluecom

References

Amos J (2005) QampA Europersquos Galileo project [online] Retrieved 20 July 2006 fromhttpnewsbbccouk1hiscitech4555276stm

BlueBrolly London Audio Walks (2006) From httpwwwbluebrollycom retrieved 12December 2006

Blythe R (1973) Akenfield portrait of an English village London PenguinBourne G (1912) Change in the village London DuckworthButler T (2005) Memoryscape audio walks [online] Retrieved 5 March 2007 from

httpwwwmemoryscapeorgukButler T and Miller G (2005) Linked a landmark in sound a public walk of art Cultural

Geographies 12 (1) pp 77ndash88Cardiff J (1999) The missing voice (case study B) LondonArtangelCerteau M D (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life (S RendallTrans) Berkeley CA University

of California PressChatwin B (1987) The songlines London VintageCresswellT (2001) The Tramp in America London Reaktion Booksmdashmdash (2004) Place a short introduction Oxford UK Blackwellmdashmdash (2006) On the move mobility in the modern Western world New York RoutledgeEvans G E (1962) Ask the fellows who cut the hay London FaberFontana B (1994) Sound IslandArc de Triomphe Paris [artwork]mdashmdash (2004) Sound as a virtual image [online] Retrieved 10 April 2004 from

httpwwwresoundingsorgPagessound20As20Virtual20ImagehtmlFoundation E M (2005) Max Neuhaus bibliography and list of works (selected) [online] Retrieved

15 April 2005 from httpwwwemforgsubscribersneuhauslistofworkshtmlFriedman J (2006) Media review drifting from memoryscape audio walks produced by Toby

Butler Oral History Review 33 (1) pp 107ndash109Garrioch D (2003) Sounds of the city the soundscape of early modern European towns Urban

History 30 (1) pp 5ndash25HuxleyA (1945) The perennial philosophy New York Harper amp BrosiTour website (2005) [online] Retrieved 20 April 2005 from httpwwwvisititourscom

tennentsitourhtmKahn D (1999) Noise water meat a history of sound in the arts Cambridge MA MIT PressLorimer H (2003) The geographical field course as active archive Cultural Geographies 10 (3)

pp 278ndash308Miller G (Artist) (2003) Linked a landmark in sound an invisible artwork a walk [Sound installation

see wwwlinkedm11info]Moving Here (2003) [online] Retrieved 6 May 2003 from httpwwwmovinghereorgukNold C (2006) Biomapping Retrieved 24 March 2006 from httpwwwbiomappingnetPinder D (2001) Ghostly footsteps voices memories and walks in the city Ecumene 8 (1)

pp 1ndash19Platt E (2001) Leadville a biography of the A40 London PicadorRelph E C (1976) Place and placelessness London PionRussolo L and Pratella F B (1967) The art of noise (futurist manifesto 1913) New York

Something Else PressSaid EW (1978) Orientalism Harmondsworth UK Penguincopy 2007 The Author Geography Compass 13 (2007) 360ndash372 101111j1749-8198200700017xJournal Compilation copy 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd


Scott K (1999) I want you to walk with me In Cardiff J (ed) The missing voice case study BLondon Artangel pp 4ndash17

Sound Travel Audio Guides (2006) [online] Retrieved 18 October 2006 fromhttpwwwaudiowalkscom

Soundwalk website (2005) [online] Retrieved 20 April 2005 from httpwwwsoundwalkcomTerkel S (1974) Working people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do

New York Pantheon BooksThe Argyle Square Sound Trail (2006) Recorded by K C V O H Project London Kings Cross

Community Development TrustThompson E (2002) The Soundscape of Modernity Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening

in America Cambridge MA MIT PressThompson P (1994) Believe it or not rethinking the historical interpretation of memory In

Jeffrey J and Edwall G (eds) Memory and history essays on recalling and interpreting experienceLanham MD University Press of America

Thrift N (1996) Spatial formations London Sagemdashmdash (2000) Afterwords environment and planning D Society and Space 18 pp 213ndash255mdashmdash (2004) Summoning life In Crang P Cloke P and Goodwin M (eds) Envisioning human

geographies LondonArnoldTimothy T (2005) Report on the Sept 9th forum event A1 audio tour brief description Arts for

Islington Forum Monthly BulletinTuan Y-F (1974) Topophilia a study of environmental perception attitudes and values Englewood

Cliffs NJ Prentice-Hall



locate themselves in the world to within a metre without cost beyond thereceiving equipment and many new mobile phones already contain GPSreceiving chips (Amos 2005) Computer manufacturers and softwaredevelopers like Hewlett-Packard have invested heavily in research anddevelopment work for outdoor mobile computing ndash including roaminglocation-based computer games that can geographically locate players in realtime using GPS Content will be increasingly sophisticated and dynamic ndashit can already be varied according to other real-world sensors such as heartrate direction and light using bio-mapping techniques (Nold 2006) Traildesigners are also gaining critical recognition In May 2006 the first everinteractivity British Academy of Film and Television Arts award went to aBBC production team for creating a series of mobile phone delivered audiowalks linked to the Coast documentary series

There is tremendous potential for practitioners of many disciplines toexperiment in this exciting and rapidly developing area and I hope thisarticle will provide some inspiration to do so I will begin by providing somehistorical context to this kind of located media by describing some of theexperiments that musicians and artists have made with sound in the outsideenvironment over the last century Some more recent artistic practicehas included voice and memory and I will go on to examine how recordedmemory or oral history might offer opportunities to create moresophisticated and nuanced experiences that might incorporate both mobileand sedentary conceptions of places and their cultural history I havedeliberately included many examples of practice including my own in thehope that it might inspire people to learn through doing and draw on someof the creative models here to inform their own work and teaching

How Musicians and Artists Developed the Walk of Art

Throughout the 20th century musicians and artists have engaged with themultisensory experience of place and they have attempted to pioneer newways communicating with audiences in a multisensory way and sometimesat outside locations This is therefore a particularly rich seam of work toconsider in this context Sound art is a vast area of different practices and inmany respects defies generalisation although an attempt to map out thehistory of the sound art movement has now been made (Kahn 1999) Muchof the art of noise and sound might be interpreted historically as a responseto the rapidly changing character of modern urban life Modernitytransformed the soundscape of everyday life with the sounds of car enginesfans and motors in all but the most remote areas It has been argued that thischange in amount and type of sound (or noise a more disparaging word forsounds that are judged to be unpleasant or out of place) has accumulatedsteadily since the early modern period and has had subtle but major effectson conceptions of place and identity In the past the church bell had ageographical significance created lsquoauditory communitiesrsquo and helped to

















































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References












































































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References







































































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References

































































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References




























































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References





















































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References















































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References








































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References



































Conclusion





Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References
































Acknowledgements


Biography





Note


References































Note


References











































Documents

Memoryscape: How Audio Walks Can Deepen Our Sense of Place by Integrating Art, Oral History and Cultural Geography