Soundmaps, Soundscape Compositions, and Soundwalks - thoughts on their relationship -

From my research thus far it seems that exploring the relationship between these three practices is central to elaborating viable extensions for the current sound map model. The three exist within a continuum of acoustic ecology/environmental orientated sound map practices, they are all essentially related and their is considerable overlap between them on both a level of method and concept.

My previous posts regarding Hildegard Westerkamp's work are a case in point, as here work involves various combinations of soundwalk type practice and soundscape composition.

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For the purposes of this study it would serve to isolate the three practices in ideal form...

A) Soundwalk practice - as exemplified by Max Neuhaus with his ardent refusel to document his soundwalks (and other installations) in any form. In this modality the emphasis is on immediacy and site-specifity, the only mediating factors (aside from the physiological) are the cue's provided by the artist/director. In this modality schizophonia is avoided entirely by the emphasis on site-specificity and immediacy which see's the subject engage the sound environment in the field.

B) Soundscape composition - Westerkamp's work will provide the working example of this method, whereby recorded elements are processed, and compiled via various means to create a particular listening/constructed representation of a sound environment/s, whereby affective transformations are facilitated in the listener and the space of listening. In this instance schizophonia is overcome through schismogenesis.

 C) Soundmap practice - exemplified by the online examples previously dealt with, in which audio recordings (typically without the creative synthesis of soundscape composition) are tagged to a cartographic rendering of the environment from whence they came. The user is left to engage the resulting body of recordings as the will, but as aforementioned with the current model, a schizophonic effect seems to dominate.

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The idea then is that in drawing from the strategies used to overcome (or avoid emtirely) schizophonia within the other primary modalities, that the sound map can be extended accordingly, to make it more viable towards the aim of the overall discipline - that of facilitating and cultivating listening and awareness if the sound environment that we inhabit.