Soundwalk: Brooklyn Botanic Garden (Work in Progress...)

Soundwalk by Meg Kramer

Here's the current version of my soundwalk project. The music in the first track is an early demo of one of the Listing tracks...and that's me trying to overcome my congestion and recent laryngitis in the voice-over. I haven't really achieved my ideal here, but I'm getting closer. Here's what I wrote in my intro for my classmates:

In this version, I decided to take more control over the listener's encounter with this space.

I used the following strategies:

* I used the physical experience of the soundwalk form to alter the listener's consciousness in the space of the garden. The use of personal headphones creates a dissociative effect in the listener; the audio information they are receiving contradicts the evidence of their other senses. The movement through space at a predetermined pace creates an interesting tension between the active physical state and the passive - following instructions - mental state.

* I borrowed from radio ballad methodology by using found texts. In this case, rather than using the news, I used history, literature, and scientific writing as the building blocks of my script. The listener experiences the space physically, but is also placed in historical and cultural context.

Ideally, these strategies will result in an active, yet meditative, experience for the listener.