Soundwalks

Psychogeography is the name of the game. (With a name like that, for most people it's also the end of the game.) Simply put, it's the examination of environments (say, our urban one) not how glaciers and tectonic plate action produces them or how architects and urban planners lay them out and set them up, but rather how individuals such as you or I construct a personally meaningful environment out of the natural features and grids superimposed over them. Judged by such criteria, each of us lives in a different Vancouver, but it might be argued that the overlap, the parts that hold the most meaning for the most residents, are the most real parts of our collective perception. Still with me?

Vancouver New Music understands that you perceive, interpret and understand the world around you with more than just your eyes. Some years ago, I produced a smell-map for Momentum Magazine; VNM takes a somewhat different tack by encouraging you to remove your headphones and earbuds and actively listen to the environments you pass through, oblivious, every day -- and what this supplementary scrutiny might teach you about them. "Sound ecologist" Hildegard Westerkamp named the activity a soundwalk -- a guided (albeit wordlessly) tour through a curated audio environment (zones of interesting sound qualities and the liminal "intertidal zones" as you proceed through the transition from one to the next.)

If it helps, you can consider the proceedings a "performance" on a par with John Cage's 4"33 -- a sound experience where the main attraction is the ambient noise resultant from the interaction between the environment and its contents, listeners included. For this reason, groups are limited to 50 participants, the bumpings, jostlings, footfalls and breaths of any larger number of conscious listeners pushing the signal to noise ratio down to the point where only the everyday interference of a noncurated walk can be perceived.

VNM presents four of these free walks annually, two every fall and two every spring. One leaves at 2 pm this afternoon (of Sunday, September 25th) from the Coal Harbour Community Centre (480 Broughton Street) for an hour and a half of intense listening; also, one week from today, at 2 pm on October 2nd, the next leaves from the main entrance of Science World (the Tower of Bauble sculpture there providing more than ten times its weight in environmental soundscape). Vancouver New Music requests that you reserve a spot in the group by calling (604) 633-0861 and to make sure to wear weather- and walk-appropriate clothing and footwear. Please turn off your mobile phones and pagers, and the intentional lighting of firecrackers is highly frowned-upon.