In this blog post I would like to compare and explore possible relation between two sound art practices, soundwalking of Hildegard Westerkamp and Electrical Walks of Christine Kubish. The practice of sound walking emerged in 1970s inspired by practice of conscious listening of the environment and acoustic ecology (Staśko-Mazur, 2015: 440-441). Westerkamp’s soundwalking is inherently ecological activity. She is questioning the backround noise and sonic pollution of human cities creating ‘authoritarian environment’ which causes inability to hear and listen to tiny sounds of barnacles during Kits Beach Soundwalk and it concerns her. Westercamp isolated those tiny noises with a use of bandpass filters and equalisation and so gave the chance to unheard voices to be heard there she doesn’t promote complete abandonment of technology (Kobler, 2002: 41-42).

Christine Kubish started her Electrical Walks in 2004 inspired by her previous sound installations from 1980s based on listening to amplified electromagnetic fields of wires. She has created headphones with built-in microphones and amplifiers which allows listeners to walk freely in the city and listen to multitude of various electromagnetic fields which surround us constantly in urban environment. Kamila Staśko-Mazur considers Electrical Walks as a new strategy of soundwalking (Staśko-Mazur, 2015: 441).

Both types of soundwalking practices differ from each others as well as carry a lot of in common. Westercamp is trying to escape human cities so she can listen to silenced sounds of the nature and maybe to find her own inner voice too (Kobler, 2002: 42). On the other hand Kubish is diving right into the noise polluted human city centres. She also uses the technology for the similar reason – to listen to the unheard. Electromagnetic fields and barnacles are both silent by its nature. Both can be brought up to be louder and be heard by the use of the technology. However human induced electromagnetic fields are by product of the noise pollution which are silencing the tiny nosies of the nature. In contrary Westerkamp once said that ‘we should listen to our cities as the native did to the forest’ (Westerkamp, 1974: 18-24) and that’s what Kubish did in more depth and precision. Certain sense of ambivalence is arising whilst comparing these two practices.

I really enjoyed the idea of Electrical Walks by Christine Kubish. It reveals sonic realms constantly present in the city environment but hidden to our hearing and brings completely different perspective and inspiration. I am particularly interested in drone sounds and electromagnetic fields are inducing these a lot in many forms, textures and pitches. Regular percussive sounds can be found as well. On contrary randomness and irregularity of sounds of barnacles is what I liked a lot in Kits beach Soundwalk of Hildegard Westerkamp.