"ListeningWall" at Points Of Listening#37, London College of Communication, October 2017

Listening has long been in the foreground of sound arts practice. In 1966, sound art pioneer Max Neuhaus stamped the word “LISTEN” onto the hands of participating audiences and took them on a walk around Manhatten, listening to industrial rumblings, buzzings of Puerto Rican street life and lastly, a percussion performance.

Taking Iris Garrelfs’ project “Listening Wall” as a point of departure, this session of PoL will take you on a journey of listening based on a series of scores for listening, created by artists such as Blanca Regina, Cathy Lane, Graham Dunning, Jez Riley French, Magz Hall, Salomé Voegelin, Sharon Gal, Viv Corringham and many more.

Each of the scores provides a different sonic perspective through which to explore our surroundings. Some scores focus our attention on the experience of listening and the quality of the sound itself; others aim to instigate relationships with very specific aspects of the audible environment. Others stimulate our imagination or instill mischievous behavior, reminding us that listening does not merely relate, but can also be “… disruptive in its nature” (Westerkamp 2015).

This initial listening session is followed by a discussion of participant’s experiences and views on the subject. Questions we might ask ourselves are not just related to what we hear, but also to how we create such identifications, and to what extent listening activities such as these are individual or communal, passive or active.