Grab some headphones, choose a route and create a map of stories and sounds on this experimental literary audio walk

Shift between your and others’ worlds as you listen to audio, music and narration collected from the swamps of Louisiana, empty Latvian villages and the edges of the Tunisian Sahara, while walking the streets of London.

Created for the Ambient Literature project It Must Have Been Dark By Then is an audio walk where you choose the route, creating a map of change. It brings you stories and sounds collected on a journey through other places in the world, inviting you to place memories in the streets, finding where your world and those of others intersect. There is always something happening somewhere else.

In January and February 2017 Duncan Speakman travelled with collaborators across three countries on three continents, visiting environments that are experiencing rapid change from human and environmental factors. What they created on their return is somewhere between a travel journal and a poetic reflection on connection, progress and memory. The experience asks the listener to seek out types of locations in their own environment, and once there it offers sounds and stories from remote but related situations. At each location the listener/reader is invited to tie those memories to the place they are in, creating a map of both where they are right now and of places that may not exist in the future.