" The project focuses on the emotional experience people go through when walking. From a psychological and sensory point of view, the project aims to understand how people feel when walking in different materials and environments, and in doing so, find a way to relieve stress by allowing busy people to focus on the walk itself, to be aware of the moment, by temporarily detaching themselves from stress, i.e. by walking aimlessly.

 

Relying on the sound of walking, the project plans to guide the audience into a state of relaxation or meditation.

 

So far, the walking sounds captured for this project have come from several various materials, such as concrete dirt paths, grass, leaves, dead branches, gravel paths, and sand. The collection sites are a mix of more lived-in locations, around Elephant and Castle in London, and more naturalistic sites, such as Richmond Park.

 

Adobe Audition and TouchDesigner were used later in the project to clean up the audio and visualise the sound. The visualisation outputs range from footsteps on natural materials such as grass and wood, to more subdued materials such as sand, to more artificial atmospheres in industrial environments.

 

Due to technical and time constraints, the project currently provides a basic categorisation of sounds and a visual representation of the relevant categories. In the future, this project will continue to visualise and collect more sound data, with the expectation that it can be curated into an online collaborative healing platform that ordinary users can upload to and participate in."