Soundwalk (2021)

As the title suggests, the piece is about the act of sound walk, which is similar to field recording but with a less concrete goal in mind other than paying attention to sounds that are usually ignored. The piece was made for a lecture-performance project: the first part explains what sound walk is, and the second part was the recording captured during the process of walking through different locations at the University of Washington before the pandemic (the quad, music building, etc.), the third part -  the lecture portion, is primarily a self discourse addressing the relation between language and music, the last part (the performance portion) demonstrated using voice (closely related to language) to make music, with and without signal processing. 
Besides increasing one’s awareness and understanding of sonic ecology, sound walking has many benefits. On the one hand, it amplifies and elevates the status of those sounds that are otherwise too mundane to demand attention, allowing one to examine their relation to the sonic surroundings closely and potentially assign poetics to triviality. On the other hand, it provides an opportunity for drifting fluidly between physical reality and thought, allowing one to simultaneously experience different modes of time (physiological vs phenomenological/experiential). In addition, it is a great way to document daily life: you can always listen back to the recordings, trying to remember what you have done, or if memory struggles, you can always use the recording to construct the past.