If you’ve grown tired of hearing your own footsteps crunching through the snow, there are plenty of other sounds to pay attention to so you can learn something new about your environment.
Aidan O’Brien created SoundWalk Guelph, an immersive experience all through using your ears. A sound walk is just as it sounds, a walk where you focus on what you’re hearing. The first sound walk was in September and O’Brien is hoping for the small group of four to grow.
The next sound walk is Feb. 22 at 10 a.m. at the Speed River trailhead. There is no cost to attend but participants are asked to register online. The route and meet-up location can be found on the SoundWalk Guelph Instagam page.
To start the walk people will be given prompts to identify the smallest sound they can hear or the farthest sound. Near the end the group will have a discussion to talk about the sounds. People are encouraged to bring a device to record sounds.
O’Brien has a background in ecology through working with geographic information systems with Forest Canada and has a masters degree from the University of Guelph’s department of geography, environment and geomatics.
He’s a musician too, so SoundWalk is where his two passions come together. The idea started when he read a book about improvisation and it had mentioned sound walking as an improvised activity.
“I like listening more than anything,” said O’Brien. He couldn’t find any similar walking groups in Guelph so he started his own. On his first walk by the McCrae House he discovered he could learn a lot about his environment just by listening.
“I found it to be very meditative and kind of a mindful practice where nothing else really matters in those 20 or 30 minutes where you're walking because you're so focused on listening that you become really present, and I found it really beneficial for my own well-being,” said O’Brien.
The same route can have completely different sounds from one season to the next. In the fall the group heard rushing water and in the winter since the water is frozen, they heard ice cracking and people skating.
For people who have joined SoundWalk, none of them had tried it before. O’Brien said it's given people new perspectives of the city and thing they hadn't noticed before.
Listen to part of the sound walk at the Guelph Farmers' Market below.
The sounds of the Guelph Farmers’ Market gave O’Brien a greater appreciation for local business. It was valuable to him because the noises of self-checkout at a corporate grocer can’t compare.
“You can really hear the purpose and the use of the market, just by listening. So you can hear people bartering and laughing and making sales, and it's almost like you're hearing the economics of Guelph,” he said. “I think that was really special for me to hear what community actually sounds like.”
The goal is to create an online database where a sound can be pinned on a map where it was captured and the user can play it. O’Brien wants the archive of noises to be pieces of history so years down the line people can hear what Guelph sounded like and how the sounds changed overtime.
“In general, I kind of feel, personally, that sound is a sense that is maybe underappreciated in our society,” said O’Brien. In comparison, photos and videos seem more important. “But something like sound might not be captured in a photo or a video from the 1940s right? And then you get to see the picture, but you don't really understand what that environment truly was like without hearing it as well.”
Once the website is created there will be an option for people to submit sound files. He sees value in the database for city planning purposes. It could help learn about noise pollution or how loud things get at certain times of day.
He hopes people pay attention to acoustic ecology which is the interaction of sound across space and time. Each place has its own foot print or sound print and the goal is to understand the sound environment of Guelph and how its changing, said O'Brien.