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.

Chapter 4. Walking Time: Replicated Walking

In Chapter 2, I reviewed theory and practice relevant to my method and discussed the context in which I move—the land and ideas of place. In Chapter 3, I presented and discussed three works that together explored how it is that I know the world as a sensate embodied walker. Each work offers a configuration of overwhelming, impairing or functionally removing one or more of my senses. However, two of those walks can also be seen as walks that I made on more than one occasion, as walks that incorporate acts of repetition. In this chapter I develop what I came to call replicated walks, walks made more than once in the same place. I began these walks looking to re-configure time. However, in the doing of this, they led me to extend my consideration of place beyond place defined by geography, to place defined by biological phenomena or socio-cultural coherence.

In his essay Repetition Søren Kierkegaard describes conducting an experiment. Having previously enjoyed a pleasurable trip to Berlin, he decides to go again; he stays in the same accommodation and visits the theatre he had previously attended. He then examines how closely such actions could repeat his previous experiences. He finds many things changed, to varying degrees. His second visit is in a different season, in the interim his landlord has married, his preferred rooms are unavailable, the theatre is showing a different play (to a different audience). In the face of all this he concludes ‘there is no such thing as repetition’ (Kierkegaard, 2009, p. 36). Against his stringent criteria—that in a repetition in life everything should be exactly the same, as should his experience of it—his conclusion is unsurprising. The potential of repetition is offered by Eno and Schmidt. In their Oblique Strategies, a set of over 100 cards, each offering a principle underlying their artistic activities, one principle is ‘Repetition is a form of change’ (Eno and Schmidt, 2001), suggesting that the idea of repetition is malleable, nuanced … and useful.

In my exploration of time and place I began to work with the idea of ‘doing something again, and again, and again ...’; I walk a place again and again. There is a lexicon of ‘re-’ words that I could use when thinking and writing about this

redo rerun retell renew remake retake repeat reproduce recreate reiterate replicate

Each have their own nuances and I have settled on replicated walks as my chosen term ... though it is easy to see that others could serve, and remake and retake will emerge as useful when I discuss the works together, later in this chapter. My replicated walks, repeated over natural units of time—day, season—are a way that I can (re-)experience a place and are a method that allows me to experiment with time, and latterly with time and place. In my act(s) of replication the ‘sameness’ of place can be examined, deconstructed and (re)imagined. Out of this emerges ideas of difference, commonality, and dimensionality of time and place. In this chapter, I present seven artworks that each use the common methods of one place, walking, and replication as a way of researching the presenting, ordering and re-presenting of time and imagining place.

4.1 Replication, Time and Place

The works are summarised below (in the order of their making) with the dimensions inherent within their replication—place, trace and time—place(s) of action, a way/route of walking, and the various orderings of times that they occupy.

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Chapter 4. Walking Time: Replicated Walking

4.1 Replication, Time and Place