Holger Schulze
Walking & Sound

(Course Code: HMVK0431IU)

Schedule

Every Tuesday
3:15pm-5pm

Concept

It might seem to be a too intuitive if not trivial way for human beings to explore their environment by walking. But actually, the practices of exploring an environment by walking are far from being such an unreflected practice: the artistic as well as the sonic and sensory research practice of Walks has been explored, developed and refined by a number of researchers, artists and musicians over the last decades – inspired by and referring to reflections and analytical approaches to walking of the last centuries if not millennia.

In this seminar we will explore the practices of walking in their relation to sound in a combination of critical reading and conceptual practices: in every second seminar sessions we will be discussing and trying to understand some of the crucial texts on walking, ranging from artistic programmes (e.g. Westerkamp’s Sound Walking from 1974) to aesthetics approaches (e.g. Evans 2012) up to cultural theories around walking, mobile perception and ubiquituous listening (e.g. Kassabian 2013).

In the other seminar sessions you, the students, will guide us through one specific and designed walk in an area of Copenhagen: with the purpose to give us, the rest of the seminar, an opportunity to understand sensorially, corporeally and kinaesthetically, how we can perceive and understand this area, this specific situation, this precise moment. Walking in these sessions is not a subject of our discussion — but actually a means of presentation and of making an argument by the senses, and in a situation.

Basic references

Westerkamp, Hildegard (1974), Soundwalking, in: Sound Heritage, Volume III Number 4, Victoria B.C.
Evans, David (2012), The Art of Walking: A Field Guide, Black Dog Publishing.
Kassabian, Anahid (2013), Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Distributed Subjectivity. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press.

Blogs:
http://www.walkingartistsnetwork.org
https://walkart.wordpress.com

Location

KUA2 16.4.76