This paper suggests a methodology for walking workshops regarding the boundaries of the body with the place where it stands, moves and walks. The key question is how through walking and embodied presence human knows and interacts with the world in a sensorial way. Considering that the body is always integrated into the perceptual flow of acoustic space, listening and sensory qualities of sound are core elements of these methodologies.
Firstly, there will be a presentation of sound artworks that reveal the dynamic characteristics of sound and how the body is immersed in it. Driven by Deep Listening practices of composer Pauline Oliveros this paper proposes methods for auditory awareness and understanding of the boundaries and relations of the body with the acoustic world. With the use of technology (piezoelectric microphones) the body realizes its spatiality.
In addition, interactive sound design methods are proposed in order to experience walking simultaneously in the digital space as well as on the ground based. More specifically, through parameter mapping sonification this paper suggests, both technically and aesthetically, ways to map elements of walking (such as heart rate) with sonic parameters in a digital environment.
This research reveals how sound reverberates in the body and how sonic communication becomes knowledge of the surrounding space. Walking and immobility become a rhythm between the body and the sound so everyone who walks answers in a subjective way to “walking as a question in itself”.