Sounds of walking: Can sound re-present the embodied experience of movement time and distance in the landscape?

Martin P Eccles

In this thesis, having introduced my research questions, in Chapter 2 I present a layered analysis of the important contexts of my practice—walking, sound, walking poetry, and place. In Chapter 3 I present and discuss three works that together explore how it is that I know the world as a sensate embodied walker. In Chapter 4 I develop what I came to call replicated walks—walks made more than once in the same place. Begun in order to re-configure time, they also led me to extend my consideration of place beyond that defined by geography, to place defined by biological phenomena or socio-cultural coherence. In Chapter 5 I describe my emerging ideas of human-scale of place and my underlying ideas of island-ness. Initially I worked on real islands, walking circumferential routes and those defined by chance procedures. From this I developed an imaginary island in the foothills of Northumberland’s Cheviot Hills; made from the human-scale of my embodied walking this led to my creation of an imaginary pandemic island of containment, created in a city, in my locale, made, and made real, by the traces of my embodied walking. Together my works constitute a body of work that represents a contribution to knowledge with specific contributions of: the use of Replicated Walks as a method of experimenting with time and place; Walking Words – the presentation of poetic text in forms (concertina-fold books, scripta continua, scrolls) that requires walking to engage with it, and that also function as metonyms for my original walking act; Walking Islands –the use of human-scale walking to imagine an island into existence, and then invoke the island as a lens through which to continue to pursue the idea. My work also contributes knowledge to the methods of how to record the sounds of the world whilst walking through it, over extended distances and time.

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This is my doctoral creative practice thesis that was examined (on 8th February 2024 by Dr Tim Shaw (internal examiner) and Professor Mike Collier (external examiner)) at Newcastle University UK.

Whilst it will become available as a pdf via Newcastle University's digital collection (at https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/) I present it in the Research Catalogue to increase its availability and also to provide access to all of the associated sound works, rather than the six that are linked to the pdf version.

It presents the same content as of the examined thesis, though in preparing it for a web format there are a few practical and presentational differences.

It is best navigated via the Thesis Table of Contents rather than the Research Catalogue Contents tab above.
References to page numbers that were present in the examined version have been removed.
The references are not hyperlinked but all appear in a full Reference list after Chapter 6.
Footnotes are activated (by hovering the mouse over them) but their numbering restarts on each new page.
Some of the artefacts documented in the examined version are presented here in full. When these may take time to load they will appear in a new window so that you can continue reading in the original window whilst the image loads.
The sound files for all the included works are presented next to the relevant text. Hovering the mouse over them will display the title and duration; clicking on the arrow will play them. For almost all the installation versions of works, the sound file compositions are to be played simultaneously (just start all the sound pieces at the same time).
Whilst it can be viewed on a tablet (or even a phone) it will be best viewed on a desktop computer.

Sounds of walking: Can sound re-present the embodied experience of movement time and distance in the landscape?

Martin Paul Eccles

This thesis is submitted for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy

The research was conducted in the School of Arts and Cultures, Newcastle University, UK

Submitted September 2023

To Thesis Table of Contents

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