Listening In / Listening Out

Reflections on A Certain Geography Workshop Held at the University of Hull

Abstract

‘A Certain Geography’ is a listening workshop in the form of a telematic soundwalk. A roamer sends a live audio stream from a remote location to an audience listening in a different space. The transmitter and the receivers listen in collaboration, often communicating their experiences via twitter. The experience is further supported by a text score created in response to the site of the workshop which is projected in the space where the audience is located, functioning both as a prompt for the audience’s listening and as a score for the roamer’s soundwalk. The workshop poses questions about listening to in situ and remote soundscapes: How do we listen solitarily and in collaboration? What is the role of the body (or the absence of it), memory, conversation, text and writing in enacting critical forms of listening to the environment? This essay reflects on observations gathered after a workshop developed in response to the University of Hull campus as part of the ‘Sound + Environment’ Conference (University of Hull, 2017) by taking the above questions as a framework for highlighting and contextualising the process.