2023
In his 2023 PhD thesis, Sounds of walking: Can sound re-present the embodied experience of movement, time and distance in the landscape?, Martin Paul Eccles explores how sound art can capture and convey the phenomenology of walking through a landscape.
The research uses a creative-practice methodology, specifically a series of "replicated walks," to investigate the relationship between the physical act of moving and its sonic representation.
Max Neuhaus and the "Sound Walk"
While Eccles' work is rooted in contemporary field recording and poetry, it engages with the historical trajectory of sound art initiated by Max Neuhaus.
Neuhaus is credited with pioneering the concept of the Soundwalk in the 1960s (notably his work LISTEN), which shifted the focus from the artist's performance to the audience's active listening while moving through a specific environment.
Eccles builds upon Neuhaus’s legacy by examining how sound can represent not just a static location, but the duration and distance of a journey. Where Neuhaus often used electronics to alter spatial perception, Eccles focuses on human-scale movement and the temporal "condensation" of long walks into sound works.