ALICAN ÇAMCI, 2020
www.alicancamci.com

At Residency 108, I focused on the relationship between walking and mapping. Contemplating how these activities inform us of a place, my work unfolded in two directions: developing a soundwalking practice and gathering field recordings throughout the residency to create a sound map. 

As a result of these, I created three interactive scenarios that engage with the sounds of Residency 108. The first of these is a sound map of the farm, where the spectator uses a tablet to virtually move around, listening to distinct parts of the residency site. The map allows “walking” in a more traditional sense, or can be performed in more playful ways, like an instrument: listening to multiple points at once, traveling very fast through different parts…

 Another interactive setting parses the soundscape into discrete elements for the listener to “remix.” Here, one might choose to listen to particular sounds individually (train whistles, birds, grass in wind, cars), or come up with mixes that blend various sources together, creating variations on the existing soundscape of the site.

In my soundwalks, I started by listening to the ground, to the contact between my feet and the surfaces they touch: tall grass, dead leaves, gravel… Most of the time this was so loud that I would have to pause to listen to the sounds around me. I wondered if this renders the act of soundwalking a paradox: To eavesdrop on the sounds that envelop me, I have to stop moving. In a third scenario, autumn walk, I play with this idea, inviting the viewer to step on a platform of fallen leaves. The sounds created by stepping on the platform are picked up by microphones to trigger sounds collected from the residency site. The paradox is inverted—one has to make sound to hear sound.