Cityphonic Walks - A book of Verbal Notation

Cityphonic Walks

Unveiling the sonic performativity of everyday life in the urban landscape

A book of Verbal Notationn

Artistic Research Project

by Irini Kalogeropoulou

Cityphonic Walks

A book of verbal notation

by Irini Kalogeropoulou

Artistic Research Project

Master Performing Public Space

Athens, 2023

Verbal Notation, designed for Cityphonic Walks, comprises a collection of site-responsive protocols, instructions, and textual and graphic scores that revolve around walking, listening, and playing sound in urban and suburban environments. This method of scoring acts as a conduit, connecting visual language, enactment, the body, and the surrounding space. It encourages individuals to engage in active listening, recording, sharing, discussing, negotiating, and ultimately rewriting the space through sound creation. Within the realms of silence and noise, through gestures, movements, and shapes, and between the audible and the inaudible, this collection of scores provides us with an opportunity to develop a new language for expressing and interpreting the city's sonic landscape, both individually and collectively.

Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening.

P. Oliveros

Memoryscape #1

Is this place familiar to you?

Do you know each other?

Do you have sonic memories from here?

Introduce yourself to the place sharing 1 sonic memory with the others.

Let your voice become audible.

Memoryscape #2

Imagine the last time someone listened to you with all his/ her attention.

How did you feel? What did he do?

Recall on your memory his/her actions.

Recall the soundscape that was created.

Memoryscape #3

Which is the most silent period you have ever experienced?

Was it only a moment or very long?

What was its effect on you?

Find a partner share your experience

[The rhythmanalist] listens – and first to his body; he learns rhythm from it, in order consequently to appreciate external rhythms. His body serves him as a metronome.

H.Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis

Subjective Listening

Breath piece

Start walking. in your neighbourhood. Observe your breathing cycle.

Observe its pace. Close your eyes. Do you hear it?

Does it affect the way you perceive the space?

What is your first thought?

What is your first reaction?

when is your breathing disturbed? Look for other breaths around you.

Look for the lungs of the city. Give them your breath.

Beat piece

Choose a spot in the space to listen to yourself.

Look for your pulse.

How does it sound?

Choose a partner and walk together for a while.

Place one hand on your neck and the other on your partner's neck.

Can you hear two hearts beating at the same time?

Two bodies with two hearts.

Two bodies with different rhythms.

Close your eyes.

Listen.

Your body.

The body of the city.

Create your couple's cardiogram. Look for the pulse of space.

Create it's cardiogram.

your partner's cardiogram

Skin piece

Walk in a quiet hour. Walk in a quiet space. Pay attention to your rhythms under your skin.

The rhythmicity of your walking, your clothing, your breath.

Do these rhythm change in relation to other sounds of the environment?

Do sounds affect you under your skin?

Ground piece

Listen to the soil by putting your ear on the ground.

Listen to each other’s pulse by putting your ear on the other’s stomach

Percussive Walking piece

Listen to your footsteps.

How do they sound?

Choose 3 different surfaces in 3 different places.

Record your walking.

How these sounds make you feel?

Do you feel empowered by any of them?

Repeat the score with different shoes. Walk loudly until you foot become a percussive instrument.

Record again.

Are you afraid of footsteps following you from behind?

Watch other’s people walking. Imagine an orchestra of footsteps.

Footstep Piece I

Look down in a sunny day.

Look at the shadows of people passing by.

Hear the sonic footprints people leave in the city.

Create a catographic visualisation based on the different footprints you hear.

Mouth piece

Look at the mouth instead of the eyes

Zoom in, in different mouths.

Observe what they have to say.

Observe how they behave. Record your thoughts.

Listen to a house, a street, a town as one listens to a symphony or an opera

H. Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis

Historical Listening

Home piece

36 months have passed since the pandemic broke out and only 2 since you fell asleep. it's winter but it feels like spring to me. Do you remember the time when everyone was at his home?

A sleeping city.

How much the space changed? Walk slowly and silently in your neighbourhood. Try not to make any sound.

Listen with your memory. Listen to the sleeping city, to the sleeping homes.

Listen as if you were a home in these days. What do you hear?

Listen as if you were a home in the present.

Now try to listen as a pedestrian in here and now.

What has changed?

Feminist voices piece

When was the last time women were heard in the public space?

Try to catch up their voices. Voices of protest, voices of presence. Feminist voices. Record them. Make an archive of voices from different times and spaces.

Place these recordings in different spaces in the city.

Create an ephemeral sound installation.

Political Listening

Sidewalk piece

Roads (initially) do not belong to anyone. They are divided (probably justly) into an exclusive zone for cars ("road") and two visibly narrower zones for pedestrians ("sidewalks"). G. Perec.

Sidewalks are for pedestrians.

Where do pedestrians come from? Where do they go? Who are they?

Sidewalks are for the shoes of pedestrians. Where do they come from, where do they go, who are they?

What social position do they have?

How do they inscribe space?

What lines do they form?

Just look down.

Listen to the sound prints that people leave in the city.

What do they say about them?

About their identity as citizens?

Choose an unknown person and imitate the sound of their footsteps.

Walk for a while like that person.

What can you understand about the unknown person just from the sound of their footsteps?

Social position, gender, age.

Record your thoughts on the spot (in situ).

Share your thoughts with the person next to you.

Record your conservation

Street piece II

Observe the street, perhaps with some method. Relax.

Don't rush.

Note the place: the time: the date: the weather:

Note everything you hear. whatever notable happens. Do you know how to distinguish notable sound events? Is there something that impresses you?

Try to record anything that doesn't have any interest acoustically, what is more obvious, what is more commonplace and mundane. Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Record all the sounds you hear at the point you are. Make a list.

Share your list with others. Read it out loud.

Now sort the sounds in your list. Put the letter N for environmental sound, H for sound from human activity, M for mechanical sound.

Now put an X on the sounds produced by you. The letters C, R, and U will be for continuous, repeated, and unique sounds, respectively.

Which category dominates? Record your list on the spot (in situ) by reading only the letters next to each sound. Find your own way to read the list in the city.

Bus stop piece

Go to a bus stop in the city. Stand for 5 minutes. Look around you. People are standing at bus stops. They carry with them expectations, fears, punishments. Can you see people where you are?

Can you hear the stories of people waiting?

Are you alone? Listen out for a company. Listen out the nearest and the farthest sound you can hear. What is it?

Can you estimate its distance from you?

How do you feel?

Inaudible piece

Listen with your whole body what is not heard in the place.

Is it silence?

Is it something beyond silence? Who rules this sound? Who rules the place?

Are you afraid of things that are not being heard?

What are you thinking?

Speak it. Whisper it.

Create a manifesto for the inaudible collecting the absence and the presence of sounds.

2 ears piece

Collection of sounds. Find a pair.

Pick a spot in space to listen. Choose an ear.

LEFT----RIGHT or LEFT-----------RIGHT or LEFT----------------------RIGHT or LEFT---------------------------------------------------------RIGHT

Cover one ear with your hand to listen with the other.

Listen as if you have one ear for 3 minutes.

Listen as if you are one body for 3 minutes.

Once the time is up negotiate for 1 minute what you heard.

Change places. Repeat the same.

What did the one side hear and what did the other?

What relationships are created when you share your ears?

What happens to the space, what happens to the other?

Square pieceCollective listening

Choose a spot in the square to listen together with others. Surround the square with your ears.

Set a timer.

Who is heard and who is masked in each spot?

At the end of the collective listening share your thoughts with the other performers. Create a manifesto for democratic collective listening.

Musical Listening

Stree piece I

Oh my streets, with your pulses...

Jean Caudere, Deserts

Stop on the sidewalk.

Listen to the pulse of the city.

Listen to the pulse of the streets.

Start walking.

Look for your pulse.

Do you hear it?

What do you hear?

Search for the pulse of these streets. Listen with memory.

Do you remember the day when their pulse was insanely alive and strong?

Do you remember the day when their pulse made you run from fear?

Do you remember the day when their pulse was so different from your own?

Listen to the here and now.

Feel the pulse of the city beating on your neck.

How fast is it?

Search for irregularities and rhythms around you. For rhythms that resist and for others that are constructed to communicate.

Use your mobile phone for recording or your camera. What do you think about them?

Record your thoughts on the spot (in situ).

Benchpiece

Benches for individuals, for pairs, for groups. For dialogue, for silence, for waiting, for solitude.

Benches, Small islands of democracy. For politics, for cigarettes, for singing, for bodies that keep their distance and for others that come close.

Benches with memory and history. Look at the people. Look how they sit on the benches. Listen the ensemble. Listen to the created composition. Observe the interaction of sounds in and around of them.

Now go back to the soloist bench. On your own bench. Concentrate on the sounds in and around of this. Listen to what it has to say. Εavesdrop on a conversation.

Keep on a white paper scattered words, sounds, symbols, sketches… If you feel the emotional baggage of the collected sounds make a composition.

Rely on what you heard, on the choreography of the sound, of the rhythm, on the narrative that is created

Repeat the process on different benches in the square or look for other benches and other squares.

Record the different variations borned in the public space.

Citysounds piece

Streetlights, trees, bins, and benches compose our urban experience. Its city has its own composition. Each city has its own rhythmic characteristics.

Every piece is different.

The spatial organization in every city is different.

We are the players of this piece.

We are the players of an urban orchestra. Walk in the neighborhood as it is a sonata. Identify the introduction, the exposition, the development, the recapitulation and the conclusion-the coda.

Wander around and try to capture these movements in different places in your neighborhood.

Map the spaces with your movement as you walk.

Silence or John Cage piece 4.33’

Can you find silence somewhere in the space?

Is there ever real silence?

The place is like an orchestra with no rests. No silence anywhere. Find a place. Stay still.

Record for 4.33’.

What do you hear?

I TACET (33'')

II TACET (2',40'')

III TACET (1',20'')

Silence piece II

Silence almost everywhere in the world is traffic. J.

Cage

Listen to the "silence", the traffic of the street with your eyes closed. Choose different places with traffic and record the different textures, harmonies, pitches of it.

What changes from place to place?

Do you believe that there is ever truly silence?

What would it be like if there were no silence?

What does silence mean to you?

Complete the sentences:

Silence is...

Silence is...

Silence is...

Evocative Listening

Walking piece for a duo

Start walking extremely slow.

Bring your attention to the soles of your feet.

Imagine that you are growing roots down into the earth. Let the roots be your anchoring to the earth.

Sense the soles of the feet and let the energy of the body sink into the soles and roots.

Try to listen as your feet are your ears. Set a timer for 5 minutes.

Try to collect all the sounds that you hear with your feet.

When time passes by start keeping a sonic journal.

Share your thoughts with the person next to you.

Island piece

You are on an island. In a square that gets wet from everywhere.

You are on a carousel. In a square that moves continuously.

You are in a vast stage. In a square where the passers-by are the performers in a performance that is created in front of your ears.

Pick a spot on the island, on the carousel, on the vast stage.

Stay for 1 minute.

Record all the sounds you hear.

Take some time to listen carefully. Move to the next point.

Repeat the same.

Pick 10 points.

What are you listening;

What does the square hear as you move?

How do you feel in each point?

Stop when you feel you know very well the island, the carousel, the vast stage

Cityphonic Piece

Stanislavsky used to demand that actors produce forty different interpretations of a single word.

Stop at a fountain and listen to the many different voices of water.

Record the interpretations.

e.g.: The voice is a beautiful flower

The voice is running

The voice is a machine gun

The voice is a siren

The voice is a baby

The voice is a snake

The voice is dying

Walking holding piece

Observe the shapes that people create as they walk together.

How do they orchestrate the landscape?

What changes in space?

Hold someone's hand and listen together. Listen through the shapes that are created. Collect their sounds.

At the end, draw the shapes you observed and add a brief description of the soundscape created.

image: David Helbich

Sonic Map piece

(The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll).

Can you hear the ocean on the map?

Have you ever tried to hear shapes, colors, numbers in the city?

Choose a space.

Listen with all your senses.

Use your smart phone or a recording device to record the sounds.

Wear your headphones and listen while you're in the space.

Can you translate this soundscape into a specific shape?

Create its sonic map.

Remember the ocean!

Soundmaking

Start walking in an open environment.

Focus on your pace. It’s always 1,2?

Upbeat, downbeat?

Continue walking.

Can you listen to yourself?

Focus on the rhythmicity of your walking.

What pattern do you follow?

How does this make you feel?

Can you find similar rhythmic patterns in nature?

Repeat the same score in an urban environment.

How is the feeling now?

Is your rhythm different?

What influences it ?

Can you find 1-2 rhythmic patterns in the city?

What do they signify?

Voice piece

Do you remember the last time you opened your mouth and you were heard in public space?

Sometimes you have to scream to be heard.

Start with your name. Find a place and try to whisper your name.

Try it a bit louder.

Draw with your voice your name in a wall.

Visualize your name letter by letter slowly. Simultaneously hearing your name. Do this forward, then backward Do these sounds carry a memory, a trace of your body?

Urban rhythms symphonic piece

Draw a straight line and follow it

Draw while you walk.

Draw while you listen.

Listen while you walk.

Grab a stick. Go for a walk in town

Play the existing architectural power structures

Are you heard?

What changes now in the town?

Skin piece for 3 performers and an abandoned building

"The hands are the eyes of the sculptor, they are instruments for thinking. "

M. Heidegger

Listen with your hands the texture, the depth, the density the temperature of the stone, the metal, the skin of the building

Listen with your hands this body by rubbing, scraping, caressing it in a loop.

Touch piece for 3 performers and a blossoming container

Make the trapped memories to be heard protecting the blossoming container. Give voice to the existing nature in the city.

Play softly. P-pp-ppp

Score piece

A score on how to make your own score

Start by selecting a specific event, object, or environment to focus on.

Consider the various elements that make up this event, object, or environment - the sesnsory, geographical, topographical, architectural, environmental, socio-political, historical elements, the everyday use and the way they influence the production and the perception of the sound in public space.

Create a list of words and phrases that describe or relate to these elements. These could be concrete or abstract, descriptive or emotional.

Experiment with different combinations and arrangements of these words and phrases

Decide the mode of the listening or soundmaking score you want to create: musical, subjective, historical, political or evocative

Use base verbs not nominalisations

Prefer the active voice

Use short sentences

Arrange your words with care

Choose your words with care

Ask the right questions

Consider how the resulting text might be performed or interpretedfor example, as a spoken word piece, a musical composition, or a visual poetry- installation.

Write out your score in a clear and concise manner, using symbols or notation as needed to indicate specific instructions or parameters for performance.

Test and revise your score as needed, taking into account feedback from performers and audiences.

Share your score with others and encourage them to create their own variations or interpretations based on your original concept.

Biserna, E.,(2022), Going Out – Walking, Listening, Soundmaking, Brussels: Q- O2

Schafer, R. M. (1992). A sound education: 100 exercises in listening and sound-making. Canada: Arcana Editions.

Pallasmaa, J., (2005), The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses, USA: Willey Academy

Radicchi, A. (2017).A Pocket Guide to Soundwalking: Some Introductory Notes on its Origin, Established Methods and Four Experimental Variations’. In A. Besecke, J. Meier, R. Pätzold, and S. Thomaier (eds), Perspectives on Urban Economics, Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin.

Certeau, M. de (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

McCartney, A. (2010). ‘Soundwalking and Improvisation’. Retrieved from http://www.improvcommunity.ca/

Lefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. Trans. Elden, S & Moore, G. London: Continuum.

Voegelin, S. (2010). The political possibility of sound: Fragments of listening. London: Continuum.

Lefebvre, H. (1991). The critique of everyday life. London: Verso.

Oliveros, P. (2018). Software for people: Collected writings 1963-80. New York: Smith College Libraries.

Perec, G. (1997). Species of spaces and other pieces. Harmondsworth:Penguin.

Lely, J., Saunders, J. (2012) Word Events, Perspectives on Verbal Notation, New York, Continuum Publishing Corporation

Rich, A. (1978). Cartographies of Silence. In The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 . New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Wunderlich, F. M. (2008). ‘Walking and Rhythmicity: Sensing Urban Space’. Journal of Urban Design, 13

Alys, F., Lampert, C.,(2016). Le Temps du sommeil, Vienna: Freunde der Secession

Helbich, D., (2018), Figures of Walking Together, New York: Queens Museum

Have you ever stopped, pay attention, and take action by listening to the hiddenvoiceofthecityintoday’sworld? AsJohnLevackDreverhighlights, one of the key objectives of soundwalking “is about circum-navigating habituation, in a process of de-sensitization and consequently resensitization in order to catch a glimpse of the ‘invisible, silent, and unspoken’ of the everyday.” The artistic research project Cityphonic Walks nurtures a process of re-sensitization to the sonosphere through a scorebased method of walking, intentional listening, soundmaking, and augmented soundwalks in urban spaces of Athens. These practices create an open space for communal sonic engagement, where language, embodiment,andspatialityconvergetofosterasharedacousticcommunity. Theobjectiveistobringtotheforefronttheoftendisregardedsonicaspects ofourhabituallivedexperiences,makingthemvisibleandaudiblethrougha poetics of noticing, providing opportunities for action towards the realization of transformation. This type of transformation aligns with Lefebvre'sconceptofeverydaylifeasanartofliving,whichservesnotonly as a context for sociological investigation but above all as a context for action.