Soundwalk series turns Portland’s parks into audio art galleries

In many ways, this year has been defined by a sense of isolation. We’ve been kept apart from the people we care most about, and from incidental interactions that give life its spontaneity and spice. But we’ve also been denied shared experiences: of going to a theater, or a gallery, or a concert, where you take in a performance or a piece of art with a group of people.

A lot of us have dealt with that absence by gathering outside by going on walks or going to the park. That’s been nourishing, but for lovers of art, it also leaves something distinctly missing.

Portland’s Third New Angle Music usually programs a variety of forward-thinking live performances with a rotating cast of musicians, composers, dancers, authors and other artists.

But for these isolated pandemic times, they’ve just begun a new program that bridges the gap between the live experiences we miss and the solo outdoors explorations possible today: it’s a series of soundwalks. You pop in a pair of headphones and take a guided sonic tour through a local park, painstakingly mixed and guided by a local composer.

“We wanted to do this to motivate people to go out into nature, but we also wanted to create a new listening experience for people,” says Director Sarah Tiedemann, Artistic Director of Third Angle New Music.

“It’s so lonely and isolated right now, that this feels really intimate,” she says. “It may look like you’re walking alone but you have another person whispering in your ear as you’re walking.”

That intimacy is front and center in Overlay, the first installment of the 3A Soundwalk Series created by Portland sound artist Branic Howard and writer Gabi Lewton-Leopold. Listeners approach a staircase leading into Portland’s Mt. Tabor Park as a soft voice introduces you to the experience you’re about to undergo.

You walk through the park, yielding to your narrator’s gentle directions as an ambient mix of field recordings and unseen narrators share impressions of the park. The recorded crunch of the trail and voices mix with your own footsteps, creating a hyper-real sonic environment that mirrors the space you are moving through.

“I’m really interested in playing around with the psychoacoustics experience,” says Howard. “We came up with ways of helping the listener feel like they’re surrounded and in a world. But then again, they’re also really at that space where we did the recordings.”

The experience is meditative, as you pay close attention to both your surroundings and the absent voices in your ears. It also feels, in a year where we’ve spent so much time alone, unexpectedly communal.

“There were a few places I could sort of feel the people being around me, almost to the point of seeing them,” says Tiedemann. “It was almost like having the group of people there in such a realistic, tangible way, it just felt like walking through echoes of a moment they had experienced: maybe even more so than if they had been there.”

Third Angle New Music will be releasing a new soundwalk, staged in a different Portland park, on the 15th of each month through August. The series will feature notable local composers like Yuan-Chen Li, Darrell Grant and Amenta Abioto. Each composer will structure their walk differently: some more historically focused, some more musical.

“We’ve just kind of given the composers free reign,” says Tiedemann.

To experience Howard and Lewton-Leopold’s Overlay yourself, go to Third Angle New Music’s website where you can stream or download the audio yourself, as well as a map of the route it will take.

“And that’s all you need,” Tiedemann says, “and your earbuds and your own two feet.”

To hear Tiedemann and Howard’s full interview with OPB Weekend Edition host John Notarianni, use the audio player above.