Deptford High Street from the North, taken on 13 June, 2015
On the 13th of June 2015, I did a soundwalk in Deptford High Street, starting from the north and ending at the south end of the street. During the soundwalk, I also recorded the sound through the binaural microphone, which allows me to walk around the street without revealing the actual microphone to be noticed by the public. Instead of being totally isolated in the soundwalk, I decided 1to do some shopping during the soundwalk, by acquiring some objects. These objects are turned into a series of sound installations, on which I stuck a small speaker, and let it play the field recording I have done on the street. The section of the sound is selected according to the place and moment at which I acquired these objects. The name of this work is called I am living in Deptford, which is a direct statement of how I experienced my living around the street and area, and how the objects encapsulate all these experiences in the medium of sound and its objecthood.
Soundwalking as an ecological practice was first proposed by R. Murray Schafer in his World Soundscape Project. Schafer took students to do a soundwalk around the places and asked them to respond with certain connotations to the sounds they had heard during the walk. While Schafer suggested that there are two kinds of walks, one is the listening walk and the another one is the soundwalk. A listening walk is a walk which dedicates to total concentration of listening, while a soundwalk explores the soundscape of a given area. “A soundwalk is any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment,” As Hildegard Westerkamp mentioned, a soundwalk composition is an aesthetic realisation rather than a practical one. In my work, I take soundwalk as the core of the process. In particular, the Deptford High Street is famous for its street market, history, and diversity. The soundwalk swept in between the street and the shops. I walk into a shop and look for a particular object that I find the most interesting and representative of the shop’s character. At the end, I purchased 8 objects, which includes an incense pot from a Vietnamese grocery store, a necklace made with seashell from a charity store, a cup of coffee from an independent coffee shop, a mat from an Indian grocery store, a counterfeit watches in the street market, a bamboo wind chime with green pentacle in the street market again, a pie dish and a dish with willow pattern from a local British grocery store.
2015 年 6 月 13 日，我在德特福德高街（Deptford High Street）進行了一次「聲音漫步」（soundwalk），路徑由街道北端起始，至南端結束。漫步期間，我使用雙耳麥克風（binaural microphone）錄音，這讓我得以在街上遊走而不必顯露麥克風，避免引起公眾注意。與其在漫步中完全自我隔離，我決定同時購物，蒐集一些物件。這些物件隨後轉化為一系列聲音裝置，我在其上黏貼小型揚聲器，播放我在街上錄製的實地錄音（field recording）。聲音片段的選取，取決於我獲取該物件的地點與當下時刻。作品題為《I am living in Deptford》，直白地陳述了我如何在該街道與區域體驗生活，以及這些物件如何透過聲音媒介及其「物性」（objecthood），封存了這一切經歷。
聲音漫步作為一種生態實踐，最初由 R. Murray Schafer 在其「世界音景計劃」（World Soundscape Project）中提出。Schafer 帶領學生在不同地點進行聲音漫步，並要求他們對途中聽到的聲音作出具特定意涵的回應。Schafer 提出兩種漫步形式：一是「聆聽漫步」（listening walk），另一則是「聲音漫步」（soundwalk）。聆聽漫步致力於全神貫注地聆聽，而聲音漫步則旨在探索特定區域的音景。誠如 Hildegard Westerkamp 所言：「聲音漫步是以聆聽環境為主要目的之遠足。」聲音漫步的創作，更多是美學上的實踐而非實用性的操作。在我的作品中，我視聲音漫步為過程的核心。德特福德高街尤以其露天市集、歷史與多元性聞名。這趟漫步穿梭於街道與店舖之間，我走進店內，尋覓我覺得最有趣且最具該店特色的物件。最終，我購入了八件物品，包括：越南雜貨店的香爐、慈善商店的貝殼項鍊、獨立咖啡店的一杯咖啡、印度雜貨店的墊子、街邊市集的仿冒手錶、街邊市集的綠色五角星竹風鈴，以及本地英國雜貨店的派盤和柳紋盤子。
