MARE: Soundwalking

Date
2026 June
Author / Publisher
Transdisciplinarity for SARN
Author

Patricia Jäggi. Research associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (School for Music. Works in the fields of Anthropology of Sound, Listening and the Senses, Sound Studies, and Sound Art. 

Website/Social Media

hslu.ch/people-finder

Artifact

Wildbach Soundwalk Memory. Recording: Andres Bosshard. Editing: Patricia Jäggi. Special thanks to Anna Fasoli, who co-facilitated the Wildbach soundwalk on 09 November 2025. Binaural recordings are best experienced with headphones.

Series Editor

MARE is a series by the members of the SARN Focus Field Transdisciplinarity. In the series, artists and researchers connect an artifact of their work to the three following guiding questions posed by the editors:


*What is your research question? 
*Which methods, practices, or working procedures did you use? 
*What role does the research or recording instrument play? Further reflections?

Listen to the Wildbach soundwalk excerpt

Every soundwalk is a journey in which space, time, bodies and auditory awareness become interconnected in novel ways. A key question in soundwalking is how we can create and facilitate extended listening experiences as we move through a sonic environment. Various methods and practices can be employed to achieve this.

The tools I have experimented with so far include listening guidance, body exercises, audio technologies, and other musical instruments. These can be used to create 'naked ear' walks or walks with headphones. During walks involving headphones, different microphones, microcomputers and controllers can be utilised to manipulate the live soundscape through filtering, looping or the addition of pre-recorded sounds. The live sound is transmitted to the participants' headphones via a short-distance radio network. In walks without technology, it is the instructions that guide and reshape auditory attention towards the sounds of the present moment. Pauline Oliveros’ Sonic Meditations and Raymond M. Schafers’ Ear-cleaning exercises are inspiring in this respect. Incorporating instruments such as gongs, played in time with walking, breathing or environmental rhythms, enables collective sonic entanglement and creation. 

Each soundwalk involves a combination of aisthetic, environmental, co-creative, contemplative and performative elements, with which one can experiment as a walking collective.

The recording excerpt that can be heard was made using in-ear microphones on a soundwalk along the Wildbach in Zurich last November. As sound receptors, microphones are often likened to the human sense of hearing. They can be used to document sound walks, as shown in the example here. However, they can also provide sensory enrichment and serve as a tool for artistic expression in technologically augmented walks. Finally, microphones serve as a metaphor for what soundwalks aim to inspire: paying close attention to all sounds at all times.