“Step by Step” Reading and Re-writing Urban Space Through the Footstep

Elena Biserna

This paper explores the materiality of sound by focusing on the interaction between the walker and urban space established by the most “basic” form of soundmaking on the move – the sound of our footsteps. It considers the presence of footprints and empreintes in the contemporary arts and surveys a series of projects by artists and composers – Peter Ablinger, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, katrinem, Dennis Oppenheim, and Jessica Thompson – highlighting the interplay between body and site established through the footsteps. By drawing on an interdisciplinary body of literature on city walking and on sound studies, I consider the step as the fundamental bodily contact with the environment while walking as well as a sound signal that generates a sense of presence, activates the surroundings, and locates us in space. Therefore, I interpret the footstep as a primary auditory event, allowing us to “read and rewrite” (Augoyard 2007) urban soundscapes, to explore and perceive – but also to reshape and participate in – acoustic spaces, establishing a material, embodied, situated, and mutual relationship with our context.

The footsteps as way to play (read and re-write) the urban

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