Before last week I had never heard of a Soundwalk. According to Wikipedia a soundwalk is "a walk with a focus on listening to the environment" which I feel is accurate but I also feel it's possible to bring outside environments to the walk as well and create these very abstract and fun experiences.
For class we were meant to pick a soundwalk out of a list and do it and then write about what our experience was.
At first I picked a Poetry Walk in the Village because I love that area. However the first part of the track kept repeating over and over (I listened to the same thing at least 3 times to make sure) and I considered the narration very dry and not necessarily engaging. So because I wasn't really enjoying it I decided to switch to the walk made by The Met museum.
This walk is 9:09 because that's how long it takes (supposedly) to get from the Met museum to the Met Breuer. I say "supposedly" because I am actually a VERY slow walker and I guess I was also distracted enjoying the environment that the track actually ended at least half a minute before I arrived to the destination.
This second attempt at the walk was super enjoyable to me. I loved how they took regular sounds and made a beautiful and peaceful composition. To me it highlighted all the beauty of surroundings that are already beautiful. I do think, however, that this particular walk isn't necessarily location specific. Because it is very abstract and there is no narration you could probably listen to the track pretty much anywhere with a similar effect. I think that that aspect is very freeing and somehow made me more comfortable with it because there really isn't any way to go wrong with it. I do also think despite that, that the area they selected for this is very beautiful and worth the trek.
I found that I focused a lot on other sounds that leaked in underneath the track more than visual cues. One of the things that pleasantly surprised me is that when you listen to the track, the cars passing by sound like waves crashing at the shore and that running footsteps give a nice steady background beat.
It helped me a lot to understand the direction I wanted to propose for our own walk. I think that doing an abstract piece that is peaceful made with regular every-day sounds would be challenging and interesting.
I would certainly recommend listening to this walk even if you don't head up to the specific area.