Week 3: Soundwalk Stimuli

On Thursday, October 1st, I went on a night walk in the southwest area of Scarborough near Warden Subway Station. The walk started in the residential area just south of St. Clair Avenue East and east of Warden Avenue. I then got onto Birchmount Road, and walked south to the Tim Hortons at the corner of Birchmount and Danforth Road. I then stayed in there for a little bit, drank my medium early grey tea that I ordered, and walked away. Since the whole journey was approximately an hour long in total, I heard many different sounds while I was  on this walk, and all of them varied. I suppose one keynote I heard on this walk was the harpsicord notification chime on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which I have set as the default sound, meaning that it is the most common chime that my phone makes when notifications from various platforms come in. A sound signal that heard while I was on this walk would be the horns of the various cars that drove past me while I was walking. These were mainly heard at the intersection of Birchmount and Danforth, as it is very rare for someone to honk in a residential neighbourhood, especially at night.

A soundmark that I heard while on this trip was the sound of TTC buses driving in and out of the bus yard across the street from the Tim's there. The reason this sound is unique and possesses qualities that make it specifically noticed by the people in that community is that there are not many TTC bus yards in the city, especially around residential and commercial facilities like this one is, which is what makes it stand out to the people who live and shop in that area of town. Because the sounds of this walk varied, they were both LoFi and ​HiFi, as R. Murray Schafer would say. One thing I learned while I was on this walk regarding the way I make meaning of the world around me is that even if not a lot is going on at night when you take a walk in a sleepy neighbourhood, it still can be very peaceful and eventful in your mind.
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As for the lenses that I employed while listening to the sounds on my walk, they definitely excluded political, but they definitely included cultural, aesthetic, and environmental. There are a few reasons why I employed these lenses. To start off, the culture piece comes from the fact that all Scarboroughnians have their own unique form of living, with everything from their homes to their neighbourhood to their forms of transportation and their community. What I saw obviously contributed to aesthetic piece, and what I saw, felt, and heard contributed to the environmental piece. They didn't really change my perception of what I was hearing, as while I do not live in Scarborough, I have visited this part of town many times, and have grasped its enviro ment tremendously, especially in the southwest area of it. One way that I interacted with the environment while I was walking was by keeping all my senses on high alert so that I could see, hear, feel, and smell everything that was around me, which meant that I was always up to date with the environment in terms of my interactions with it. Lastly, if everyone practiced listening this closely to their environment, I feel the impact it would have on the world would be that it would make people learn to appreciate the environment around them and take better care of it. Overall, this walk was a tremendous experience, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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