Amble Skuze created Normalised Interfacing, a wheelchair sound walk, which maps the experiences and thoughts of a wheelchair user in a new city.

This work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the Sound Walk September Awards 2025. 
Below, Amble discusses the piece, and what lead to its creation.

My piece, Normalised Interfacing, started with a commission from the Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. They were running a residency called My City, My Sounds which made me ask the question: what does a city sound like when experienced by a disabled body moving through its streets?

This question became the foundation for my work. As a disabled artist, I wanted to explore the real, everyday interaction between my body and the city of Karlsruhe. I wasn’t just interested in recording sounds; I wanted to use sound and technology to understand and reveal the physical, social, and technological barriers that exist in cities, which are often designed without considering non-normative bodies. The core idea was to capture that direct, unplanned encounter.

My thinking was influenced by Disability Studies, particularly ideas explored by scholar Petra Kuppers. She talks about how disabled people often feel like they are constantly “performing” in public spaces. We find ourselves explaining our needs, justifying our presence, or navigating stares and assumptions simply to exist in places not built for us. It’s a kind of mediation we do almost automatically. For Normalised Interfacing, I wanted to try and bypass this usual “performance” or careful self-presentation as much as possible. The goal was to experience the city more directly, letting its physical reality hit me without the usual buffers or strategies I might use to make it easier.

To achieve this, I decided on a specific method, which was quite different from how I usually navigate. Typically, if I’m going somewhere new in my wheelchair, I have to plan meticulously. I spend time checking digital maps for step-free routes, researching accessible public transport stops, finding out where accessible toilets are located, and sometimes I need help from assistants to get over unexpected barriers like steps. It’s necessary preparation, but it also shapes my experience in advance.

For this project, I deliberately set aside all those strategies. The key rule was: explore Karlsruhe intuitively, the way someone without mobility restrictions might casually wander. No advance checks for level access. No relying on digital maps to steer me around obstacles. No sticking to routes I already knew were easy. No assistants to help me over difficult spots. The idea was to let the city’s existing layout – its streets, pavements, crossings, and public spaces – impose itself on me without any pre-emptive filtering or adaptation. I would simply pick a direction and start moving, documenting the journey wearing body sensors and using sound recording equipment attached to my wheelchair.

This approach directly connected to the project’s main theme: how cities and their systems often exclude people whose bodies don’t fit the assumed “norm.” Urban environments can often actively create difficulties for non-normative bodies. This isn’t just an abstract idea; it translates into very real, physical sensations and obstacles encountered moment by moment.

Imagine starting out on what should be a simple exploration. Instead of a smooth journey, you might suddenly face:

• Cobbled Streets: What looks charming can be jarring and painful in a wheelchair. The uneven surface sends constant, intense vibrations up through the frame of the chair, making travel uncomfortable, tiring, and sometimes precarious. Sustained movement over cobbles becomes a significant physical challenge.

• Unexpected Steps: A single step, which might be barely noticeable to someone walking, becomes an absolute barrier. Without a ramp or dropped curb nearby, it’s like hitting a wall. It forces an immediate stop, often requiring a long detour or simply turning back, which can feel frustrating and isolating.

• High Curbs Without Dropped Sections: Trying to cross the street? If there’s no lowered section of curb (a dropped curb), getting off the sidewalk onto the road and back up again becomes a major undertaking. It can feel like manoeuvring down and up a small, dangerous cliff. This often means searching the route to find a single accessible crossing point, adding significant time and distance to a simple journey.

• Arbitrary Obstructions: These are the seemingly small things that have a big impact: bollards placed too close together to fit a wheelchair through, temporary construction fencing blocking the only accessible path around a building, or shop displays spilling out so far onto the pavement that they leave no space to pass. These obstacles appear without warning, disrupting the flow and making navigation unpredictable and stressful.

These weren’t hypothetical problems; they were the tangible realities I encountered by following my self-imposed rule of “no planning.” The sound recordings captured the audible evidence of these encounters: the harsh rattle over cobbles, the abrupt silence when hitting a dead-end step, the extended periods navigating to find a way around, the background hum of traffic while stuck at an impassable curb. The body sensors captured the physical toll – the increased vibration levels, the changes in movement patterns, the stops and starts.

The technology became an interface translating this raw, unmediated experience. The sounds and data weren’t merely about the city’s acoustics; they were about the interaction between my specific disabled body and the city’s infrastructure. It revealed how the environment itself shapes the experience of disability in that space.

By removing my usual coping mechanisms, Normalised Interfacing aimed to make visible and audible the constant negotiation and unexpected barriers that are part of daily life for many disabled people in urban environments. It highlighted how accessibility isn’t just about specific buildings having ramps; it’s about the entire journey, the flow of movement, and how countless small design choices in the cityscape can either include or exclude. The project became a way to share that embodied experience of navigating a city not built for you, using sound as the primary witness to the challenges encountered when simply trying to move intuitively through public space.

The urban landscape itself became a catalyst for critical reflection on disability culture during the route of my soundwalk. Each site – the bridal shop interrogating societal standards of attractiveness, the job centre highlighting the tension between seeking benefits and employment, the gym and wheelchair shop exposing advertising’s curated body ideals – triggered deeply personal responses to pervasive ableist narratives. 

I consciously wove these raw, internal monologues into the fabric of the soundwalk. This act serves as a direct counterpoint to the constant external interrogation disabled people face about our health, methods, and existence (‘what happened?’). Through intimate, almost uncomfortably close whispered vocals, I offer the listener an unfiltered glimpse inside my mind. It is an insider’s view, deliberately unsettling, refusing the comfort of passive observation and forcing an encounter with the lived reality of navigating a world built on exclusion.

The winner and honourable mention of the SWS Awards 2025 will be announced around the start of 2026.