Re-evaluation and mapping our sense of place and time with the ‘sonic dérive, GPS data and binaural recordings : Sonic mapping of desire paths and places of sonic interest.

I was very fortunate to be able to present my paper ‘Re-evaluation and mapping our sense of place and time with the ‘sonic dérive, GPS data and binaural recordings : Sonic mapping of desire paths and places of sonic interest.' at the Sonic Cartography: Soundscape, Simulation and Re-enactment conference at the University of Kent on the 29th October 2022, situated at the amazing Chatham Historic Dockyard site. There were some fantastic papers and also performances, I particularly enjoyed the Wave-field Synthesis Concert.

Here is the abstract for my paper :-

The practice of soundwalking and recording has been implemented as a method in artistic composition pedagogy, soundscape awareness interventions, in addition to social science, psychology and acoustics research. This paper explores the author’s phenomenological practice of recording sonic dérives, psychogeographic sound wanderings through urban and rural environments; exploring both consciously and unconsciously environments and paths of sonic interest, leading to the creation and mapping of sonic ‘desire’ paths. The practice is the basis of an ethnographic study of spatial-temporal soundscapes, and the development and evolution of soundscape over time, investigating the sense of place and changes of human movement through environments, mapping the relationship of place, desire routes, sonic interest, culture and social change.

This paper will detail preliminary findings and propose a sonic dérive mapping and archiving method, to investigate participant and practitioner created sonic desire paths through selected environments, mapping their routes and recordings; looking for intersections of sonic activity, interest and intrigue, breaking away from the fixed predetermined soundwalk methodologies. The method explores the phenomenological experience of soundscape and place, forming maps of sonic routes and objects created and noted by the participants, escaping the constructs of positive and negative sounds classifications, which dominate many soundscape studies methodologies.

Full paper will be published soon.