Introduction

First things first: what is a soundwalk? Basically it’s a walk where the focus is on listening. The term originated from the World Soundscape Project led by the Canadian composer and researcher R. Murray Schafer. A soundwalk as intended by the acoustic ecology movement of which Schaeffer was a pioneer did not add any intentional sound to the walk. So there were no headphones or audio players involved, it was a matter of closely and intently listening to your surroundings as they are. This movement also popularised the word soundscape, which for them is the literal equivalent of a landscape: our surroundings as we perceive them, but in the sonic instead of the visual domain.

Nowadays soundwalks are often used as an artistic medium. In a nutshell the creators set out a route and make a soundtrack to go with it. This soundtrack can be giving you information like in a documentary, adding atmosphere like the score of a film or presenting a full ‘radio’ play with your physical environment as scenography.

The major element that Echoes adds to the concept of the soundwalk as a medium is geolocation. To put it simply: it knows where you are. For this it makes use of the GPS technology in the smartphones virtually everyone is carrying around these days. Before a platform like Echoes, soundwalks often used a portable audio player (think Walkman, iPod) which contained directions, but there was no way of knowing where you actually were at a certain point in the soundtrack. So for example it could have a piece of audio for the Tower of London and one for st. Paul’s Cathedral but the maker would need to estimate how long it takes an average person to walk from one to the other- or it would need a clunky interaction like the walker pressing the forward button on the player once arriving at the next spot.

In its most basic form this is what Echoes can do: you connect a bit of audio to a certain location (an ‘Echo’) on the map and it automatically plays when the walker arrives at this location. For some walks this is enough and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you want to expand on this there is a wide range of tools and possibilities. You are no longer tied to a fixed trajectory in a fixed order, since the app will follow wherever the walker goes. Sound can be made to only be heard in a certain area, or it can accompany you en route to the next Echo. Multiple Echoes can play at the same time allowing for interactive compositions. Echoes can be shown on the map but can also be hidden turning an entire area into an auditory treasure hunting zone. Functionality inspired by the world of games can make the volume of an Echo change in relation to how far you are away from it. There’s a large range of options and especially when you start combining them the possibilities are virtually endless.