Sustainable sounds: Hildegard Westerkamp's soundwalking, then and now

In her landmark 1989 piece Kits Beach Soundwalk, German-Canadian composer Hildegard Westerkamp (b. 1946) explores the Vancouver coastline through familiar sonic cues: the murmur of small waves, the call of seagulls, and water lapping over rocks and seashells. Westerkamp's voice, detached and poetic, evenly narrates overtop these natural sounds: “The barnacles put out their fingers to feed on the water…The city is roaring around these tiny sounds. But it's not masking them.” The piece is a celebration of sound and affect, an exploration of the bodily sensations a walk on the beach can produce. As she continues—“I could shock you, or fool you, by saying the soundscape is this loud [increases levels]….but it is more like this [lowers levels]”—the listener is made aware of Westerkamp's post-production interventions in the studio to foreground or remove urban sounds. Later in the piece, Westerkamp describes some recent dreams, theatrically leaning into the onomatopoetic (“sizzling,” “gurgling,” and “clicking”). The beach was a favored location of Westerkamp's; because it was “less public and exposed,” she could record various sounds without the intrusion of bystanders (Westerkamp, Interview 111). At nearly ten minutes long, Kits Beach Soundwalk weaves together the sounds of Westerkamp's walk on a sandy beach, her dream reminiscences, and samples of Mozart and Xenakis. The work is carefully choreographed; nothing we hear is what it seems on the surface. Then, as suddenly as it began, the piece stops; the dream is over. As a composer, sound theorist, and teacher, Westerkamp (Figure 1) was a founder of acoustic ecology. A leading proponent of soundwalking, or “any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment,” she encouraged her readers to embark on walks, alone or in small groups, where participants could “rediscover and reactivate” their hearing (Westerkamp, “Soundwalking” 18). Throughout her five-decade (and counting) career, most of which took place in and around British Columbia, Westerkamp redefined various forms of environmentally-conscious acousmatic music. Convinced that urban noise pollution had desensitized our ears, she hoped that by encouraging individuals to listen critically to the sounds around them, they could begin to make more informed environmental choices. Westerkamp's artistic practice resonates with contemporary developments in sound studies, including Dylan Robinson's advocacy for a “critical listening positionality” to help us “frame the moment of contact between listening body and listened-to sound” (9–11). Her concepts also continue to influence contemporary soundwalking projects in Germany, extending the genre into ever new realms, from art installations to noise mapping, as these initiatives have been used to explore tensions around redevelopment, gentrification, surveillance, and even privacy. The twentieth century saw an explosion of interest in urban sounds, and in Germany and North America, the urban experience was represented in everything from Walter Benjamin's writing about the flâneur to Walther Ruttmann's film Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927), featuring a musical score by Edmund Meisel. Urban planners used soundwalking in Weimar-era Berlin to produce noise maps that meticulously detailed traffic noise in Charlottenburg (Ouzounian 291–94; Kösters, Bierreth, and Kemper 312; Bendikat 1–20). In postwar New York, the Fluxus movement dabbled in soundwalks, as did sound archivist Tony Schwartz, whose 1954 album New York 19 features the sounds of his postal code on the upper West side. Between 1966 and 1976, artist Max Neuhaus staged a series of walks in New York City, stamping “listen” on participants’ hands before they embarked on a path chosen by the artist, culminating in concerts at his percussion studio (Neuhaus; Ouzounian 247; Balit; McCartney 216). Each soundwalk could fulfill different functions depending on its design: a form of art work, experiential learning, civic engagement, or a community-building exercise (Behrendt, “Soundwalking” 249–57; McCartney 212–37; Radicchi, “Pocket Guide” 70–73; Brown, “Soundwalking” 3–18; Smolicki, Soundwalking 1–12). Over the last few decades, Westerkamp's ideas have found resonance in Berlin, a sonic site uniquely suited for soundwalking explorations due to the city's relatively flat topography and complex historical layers. In 2012 British sound artist Peter Cusack created Klang Orte Berlin/Berlin Sonic Places as part of a DAAD Artist-in-Residency program. Berlin Sonic Places originated as part of the Tuned City Collective, a multidisciplinary research project and sometimes festival founded in 2008 (Tuned City). By selecting sites in Prenzlauer Berg, Rummelsburg, and Tempelhof, Cusack set out to explore “sound in the urban context and how it is affected by city planning and development” (Berlin Sonic). Between January and September 2012, he invited hundreds of stakeholders, including urban planners, architects, politicians, musicians, sound artists, and the greater residential community, to participate in performances, installations, soundwalks, and panels. Cusack's Rummelsburg soundwalk on the western edge of Berlin's Lichtenberg district was designed to explore the “sound diversity” of the place, from the infamous workhouse and prison complex built in the 1870s to the sounds of birds and water at the nearby bay. The area was transitioning from an industrial site to a largely residential one, and traces of its history (both under the Nazis and during the German Democratic Republic) were visible as well as audible. In following the map distributed to them, soundwalk participants were encouraged to think about the soundscape in relation to urban development by listening to the absence of certain sounds and the presence of others (Cusack, Klang Orte; Ouzounian and Lappin). More recently, Cusack has focused on Pankow with a 2019 soundwalking initiative co-organized with Berlin-based sound artists Udo Noll, Martyna Poznańska, katrinem, and Sam Auinger. Funded by the District Office of Pankow, the intiative's five walks explored different auditory experiences, from breathing to bodily sensations, and investigated a range of soundscapes, from residential spaces to the then-active flight paths of Tegel airport. With Tegel ceasing to function as an airport in 2021, these walks can also remind us of the fleeting, ephemeral nature of sound (Cusack, Pankow Soundwalks). Bremen-born, Berlin-based sound artist Christina Kubisch created her “electrical walks” in order to expose the normally invisible, inaudible currents through which we move in our daily lives. Participants wear magnetic headphones with built-in coils to pick up the electromagnetic waves (normally inaudible to the human ear) emitted from various urban elements like radar, light, and wireless communication systems as well as antennas and public transportation networks. Since its 2003 premiere in Cologne, Kubisch has repeated the walk in 75 cities across the world. She provides participants with a map where select sounds might be encountered but urges the soundwalkers to still “feel free to explore the city as you choose.” Despite having staged 90 iterations of her electrical walks, Kubisch considers them “a work in progress” and even when returning to a familiar city for a second time, she is careful to select new areas to explore. A resulting searchable electromagnetic sound archive is freely available at the ongoing project's website (Kubisch). By encouraging auditors to find their own sounds, Kubisch's work allows listeners agency and insight into the normally unheard worlds around them. Still other soundwalks aim to produce concrete and actionable results, as revealed by the initiative Berlin wird leiser, designed by the Berlin Senate and the Senate Department for the Environment, Transport, and Climate Protection. The action plan was part of the 2002 European Environmental Noise Directive, which required cities to protect people from “unwanted or harmful outdoor sound created by human activities” and encouraged them to engage with “acoustical planning.” In line with these European Noise Ordinances, Berlin will produce noise maps every five years (most recently in 2022), measuring noise levels throughout 892 square kilometers of the city (Directive 2002/49/EC, 12–25; Strategic Noise Maps; Ouzounian, 125–50). Other components of Berlin wird leiser encouraged individuals to register their auditive experiences on the app Hush City. Accompanying Hush City soundwalks took place in Treptow-Köpenick and Mitte. One Pankstraße event, designed by architect and urbanist Antonella Radicchi, began with “ear cleaning” exercises (a technique used by Westerkamp and her colleagues, including R. Murray Schafer), intended to help participants focus on the sounds at hand. The group then walked to six sites where noise levels were carefully measured on the app, including a nearby playground and along the Panke River. The exit surveys revealed a lack of consensus, however, as some participants perceived the environments as “too loud,” while others found them perfectly acceptable (Radicchi, Hush City). Individuals around the world can still download the Hush City app to create and share brief recordings that measure the decibel levels in their surroundings. What is the quietest sound? What else do you hear? What else? What else? What else?

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