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Improvisational Listening: Audiowalk – St Enda’s Park

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

Jimmy Eadie
Jimmy Eadie*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
*
Email: eadiejj@tcd.ie
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Abstract

This article discusses the affordance of headphone listening as a sensory experience within a responsive, interactive and improvisational site-specific audiowalk. The intention here is to elucidate how correlational and dialectic tensions between improvisation and listening have informed an approach to creating the geolocative project: Audiowalk – St Enda’s Park. Initially using the concept of soundwalking, as both a touchstone and a springboard, I explore some of the theoretical and dialogic underpinnings that have grounded this process-orientated work. The discussion is then extended into a phenomenological application of improvisational listening and walking in this form of somatic art, and particularly how this can impact the immersive experience for the participant/performer. The theoretical grounding and telos are explored in terms of the improvisational ‘flow’ state and how this accentuates and engenders an awareness of a soundscape through contextual and ethnographic aural histories. Critical reflection and analysis will be discussed throughout in attaining greater epistemological efficacy dealing with concepts of place and memory within this site-specific work.

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Organised Sound , Volume 26 , Issue 1: The Sonic and the Electronic in Improvisation , April 2021 , pp. 119 - 128
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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