Ambulation: Exploring Listening Technologies for an Extended Sound Walking Practice

Ambulation is a sound walk that uses field recording techniques and listening technologies to create a walking performance using environmental sound. Ambulation engages with the act of recording as an improvised performance in response to the soundscapes it is presented within. In this paper we describe the work and place it in relationship to other artists engaged with field recording and extended sound walking practices. We will give technical details of the Ambulation system we developed as part of the creation of the piece, and conclude with a collection of observations that emerged from the project. The research around the development and presentation of Ambulation contributes to the idea of field recording as a live, procedural practice, moving away from the ideas of the movement of documentary material from one place to another. We will show how having an open, improvisational approach to technologically supported sound walking enables rich and unexpected results to occur and how this way of working can contribute to NIME design and thinking.