A Chorus Of Footsteps
An artist from aifoon silently guides spectators through the city, triggering soundscapes that blend with the ambient noises of the neighborhood. This audio features a variety of field recordings – from footsteps in the snow to cowbells from northern Thailand, from the breathing of a sleeping woman to Istanbul’s chestnut sellers calling out their wares. The result is an auditory tapestry where sounds from different times and places merge with the spontaneous, everyday noises of the city. As the walk unfolds, new relationships emerge between sound, space, and presence – between what is heard and what goes unnoticed, between memory and immediate experience.
If each passer-by is a vessel of sound, what trace do they leave on the city’s sonic fabric? In this performance explores the uniqueness of every layer of the urban soundscape.
The walkers form a temporary collective through the sounds they carry. Each person holds a fragment; together, they create a whole. Their journey traces an invisible yet audible path through the city – an intervention in the auditory ecology of the urban landscape.
The vibrations that spill from the speaker to our spines make this interplay of times and places tangible, while the collision of fiction and reality challenges our listening perspective. Beyond the acoustic level, associative, relational, intercultural, and ecological dimensions unfold.
The carriers are not only discreet listeners and observers, but also representatives and performers within public space. Due to the freedom of positioning within the group, they even become co-composers.
Practical information
Introduction: 15 min.
City walk: approx. 45–55 min.
Debriefing: 30 min.
Participants: minimum 10, maximum 20 walkers
Facilitators: 1 artist from aifoon + 1 audience leader from your organization (who closes the group)
Equipment: 20 lightweight speakers and backpacks (provided by aifoon)
The walk can be extended with the participatory exercise EXTERIOOR, in which participants use The Swarm to shape and compose the soundscape of a square. (This requires at least one hour.)