Westerkamp records commentary inside the Conservatory.

Oueen Elizabeth Park

The location that served as subject for Westerkamp's 1974 article was the same one chosen for our 1997 soundwalk. Queen

Elizabeth Park, situated close

Vancouver, is a place
the area. described in

it

to

Westerkamp's home in

she has visited frequently. A landmark of

tourist brochures as "Vancouver's oasis,"
only tropical garden, under the triodetic
Conservatory at the highest point of the
point in the city), which provides a beau-

contains the city's

dome of the Bloedel
park (also the highest
tiful view of the urban area and surrounding mountains.

0ueen Elizabeth Park is visually extremely attractive. ll

card park which Gaptures the eye with such immediacy that the other
senses are easily neglected. 0n this walk however, do not neglecl
your ears. Listen to the "soundlrack" ol the park, and explore how
much it harmonizes with your visual impression (Weslerkamp 1974,
is a post-

21).

had thought about Queen Elizabeth Park many times as I

read Westerkamp's description of her soundwalk there in 1974.1

The Bloedel Conservatory,

viewed from near the parking lot.

,r

"v.

remembered going to the park on a visit to Vancouver when I

was a teenager, and being astounded by its profusion offlowers.
My soundwalk with Westerkamp in 1997 was my first visit to the
park since becoming acquainted with her article.
As we moved through the park on that soundwalk, we were
aurally connected, both wearing headphones connected to the
portable DAT recorder that Westerkamp carried. She also had a
stereo microphone, while I had two still cameras: a good 35

mm., and a lower-quality automatic for surprise moments. I

wanted to keep a visual and aural record of our walk, so I could

reflect on it later and create a multimedia presentation. I had

decided by this point to make my PhD dissertation on
Westerkamp into a CD-ROM, since it would give me a chance
to work interactively with sound, image, and text, bringing people closer to her work. This soundwalk was to
form an important part of that presentation.
Being aurally connected was intensely intimate: we were sharing a private, amplified per-

;1!::1f;:l

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Waterfalls in the Sunken Garden

Park visitors walk by the waterfalls, Sunken Garden

tropical? Does il sound tropical? (Westerkamp 1974,21).

The Bloedel Conservatory is a miniature tropical rainfbrest,
constructed by B.C.'s largest lumber company, an exotic gem
perched in an urban centre, no chainsaws within earshot. Once
again, Westerkamp noticed a diff'erence from her earlier walk.
The waterwheel in the conservatory was not working properly;
its characteristic sound was muted and uneven. The conservatory was filled with tropical plants, fish and birds, including some
very vocal and hilarious green parrots.

Sunken Garden
A section 0f the park which is acoustically of special interesl. Can
you hear the sounds ol the city disappear while you walk down into
Ihe garden? 0bserve its formations and explore how much these
inlluence ils acouslics (Westerkamp 1974, 231.

Th:

Sunken Garden is built in an old quary, and the high

outside sounds. I heard the sound

:: :: -i ---. .-i this area block

-:

l.

rr:r.

-:

:r.-.::i

t:

of traffic almost disappear, with the exception of the occasional

siren.

Next to the path, which wound down to the lower level, some
Sunday drummers were playing, reminding me of High Park in

Toronto and Mount Royal Park in Montreal. Their drumming

accompanied our walk down to the waterfall. By chance, as we
approached the water the drumming intensified, seeming to
mimic the intensity of the water from our perspective. In the
f'lower-beds of the sunken garden was a large, prickly plant like
a giant rhubarb, several feet tall. Westerkamp says that it disappears entirely in the winter. We stopped and recorded the touch
of our fingers on the underside of the leaves. Again, a passerby
approached to ask what we were doing, and we talked for a
while.
Here we altered Westerkamp's original route slightly, and
went towards the creek.

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Westerkamp
records water
voices.

The Creek

Westerkamp used the microphone to highlight relationships

between sound sources, and to create new sonic relationships.
Two of these excerpts were used directly in the electronic
installation: one which linked the areas of the sunken garden
and the creek: the other in the look-out section based on the

sonic relationship between

passing airplane and the

Conservatory venting system. Another, which highlighted the

relationship between thc waterfhll in the sunken garden and the
drumming of some park visitors, became an impoftant part of
one of my later compositions.
I needed to condense the whole experience so that i could
work with it within the restrictions of computer memory and
presentation format. I focused my attention on four areas of the
park: the Conservatory. the Sunken Garden, the Look-out and
the Creek. (The Web site refers to all seven areas originally dis-

cussed in Westerkamp's article). As soon as I tbcused in thi-s

way, these fbur places started to take on symbolic meaning
(two on high, two below; the mountain above, the water
below). I decided to use chance operations to choose segments
of sound, in order to avoid becoming overly polemical and to
maintain a focus on what we had actually heard. I rolled dice to

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{le/y\ eql Jo elnultu qcee tuo]J punos Jo lueurSas euo asooqc

Soundwalk Tips
Stat by listening to the sounds of your
body while moving. They are closest to
you and establish the first dialogue
between you and the environment. If
you can hear even the quietest of these
sounds you are moving through an environment which is scaled on human proportions. In other words, with your
voice or your footsteps, for instance,
you are "talking." to your environment
which then in tum responds by giving
your sounds a specific acoustic quality.
Try to move
Without making any sound.
Is it possible?
Which is
the quietest sound of your body?

!
.]

(If, however, the sounds you yourself

produce are lost in the ambient noise of
your surroundings you experience a
soundscape which is out of balance.
Human proportions have been disregarded here. Not only is your voice
inaudible, but your ear also is assaulted
by a multitude of loud and chaotic

listen to the sounds nearby.

What do you hear? (Make a list.)

Lead your ears away from these

sounds and listen
beyond into the distance.

What else do you hear?

What is the quietest sound?

Other people?
Nature sounds?
Mechanical sounds?

What else do you hear?

What else'l
What clsc?
whrl clsc?

How many
C

onti nu ou

so

undscon ti nuou s soun dsco

ntinuou s sou ndscontin uou s sound

can you detect?

Interesting rhythms?
Regular beats?
The highest,
The lowest pitch?

Do you hear any

I.n.t.e.r.m.i.t.t.e.n.t.or
.d.i.s.c.r.e.t.e.s.o.u.n.d
.s?
Rustles?
Bangs?
Swishes?

Thuds?

noises.)

So far you have isolated sounds

from each other and gotten to know
them as individual entities. But each
one of them is part of a bigger envi-

ronmental composition. Therefore.

reassemble them all and listen to
them as il'you wcre listening to a
piece of music played by many dif'ferent instruments. Be critical and
judge whether or not you like what
you hear. Pick out the sounds you
like the most and create the ideal
soundscapc in the context of your
present suroundings. What would
be its main characteristics? Is it just
an idealistic dream or could it be
made a reality in our modern soci-

What are the sources of the different

ety?

Lead your ears away from your own

sounds?

sounds and

What else do you hear?

-Hi
"Soundwalking."

Planefan is an unedited excerpt tiom the soundwalk, an

of Westerkamp's skill in heightening relationships

example

among sounds. It records a moment in which we walked liom

the Knife-Edge sculpture over towards the conservatory. A

plane is flying overhead, and as we move towards the vents of
the conservatory, the falling glissando of the plane seems to
melt into the broad-band noise of the vent.
Creek begins with a long segment from the soundwalk, in
which Westerkamp approaches part of the creek and moves the
microphone to highlight the architecture of the creek bed. Here,
she seems to use the microphone like a paintbrush, running it
slowly around the outlines of rocks and fissures, branches and
rivulets, so that we can hear the voices of the water change in
response to the forms that they move through and create in their
movement. Bubbling through the water sounds are short phrases from our later conversation about the experience.
Elephant Skin Plant is entirely based on a short segment
:::e sounds alk-about fifteen seconds long-in which
-:
-..:-:: r--::i iecorded the
sound of my finger stroking the
:1r:-: ' -= -.--: ,::: tiom base to tip. I did various kinds of

lde-eard Westerkamp,

from

processing (speed changes, peak/notch filtering) which highlighted the rough texture and extended the length of the sound.
while lowering its pitch.
Irain, like the plant piece, comes fiom the sunken garden.
Just befbre we left the garden, we heard in the distance the
haunting sound of a train horn. It was a quiet sound, far away.
and almost lost in the surrounding soundscape. Yet the power
of this sound is evident in my processing. I did not realize initially that when I worked with some of the other sounds recorded in the park, I had altered them to harmonize with the train
sound. as is evident in this piece.
Jungle is a meditation on Westerkamp's statement that we
are in a'Jungle-like area," as well as her question from her article, "Does it sound tropical?" Ijuxtapose the sounds ofthejungle-like area of the Conservatory with a brief segment by the
cash register. When I listened to the tape-recording, I noticed
that a bird flew overhead, just as the cash register was runnins.
The bird sang with the cash register, repeating its rhythm exactly a few beats later. The bird song is in the background, but stili
(barely) audible.

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