sound.garden.scape: Gastown, a virtual soundwalk

As the urban soundscape gets louder, many listeners are exchanging their acoustic soundscape for an electro-acoustic one. This sonic mediation is made mobile through the use of personal portable audio (ppa) devices such as the iPod. This project seeks to understand where technology connects the natural and the virtual using the tradition of soundwalking. sound.garden.scape: Gastown, used ppa devices to create an interactive immersive aural environment that re-presented Vancouver's Gastown area. Using compositional methods and the dedicated attention to listening found in soundwalking practice, the project functioned as a virtual soundwalk, allowing listeners to move through space and time reacting and interacting with an aural space completely separate from the installation venue. Within this installation listeners used their ppa devices actively to seek out and listen to the same urban noise they normally use ppa to block out.