Improvisational Listening:Audiowalk – St Enda’s Park

Abstract

This article discusses the affordance of headphone listening as a sensory experience within a responsive, interactive and improvisational site-specific audiowalk. The intention here is to elucidate how correlational and dialectic tensions between improvisation and listening have informed an approach to creating the geolocative project:Audiowalk – St Enda’s Park. Initially using the concept of soundwalking, as both a touchstone and a springboard, I explore some of the theoretical and dialogic underpinnings that have grounded this process-orientated work. The discussion is then extended into a phenomenological application of improvisational listening and walking in this form of somatic art, and particularly how this can impact the immersive experience for the participant/performer. The theoretical grounding and telos are explored in terms of the improvisational ‘flow’ state and how this accentuates and engenders an awareness of a soundscape through contextual and ethnographic aural histories. Critical reflection and analysis will be discussed throughout in attaining greater epistemological efficacy dealing with concepts of place and memory within this site-specific work.