Author: Kai Zhang

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stratawalks walks

Port Hope Soundscapes

Port Hope Soundscapes is a project by Critical Mass: A Centre for Contemporary Art



The Hamilton Perambulatory Unit was commissioned by Critical Mass to create and develop immersive soundscape experiences played through a GPS-guided walking app in Port Hope. 

The text on this map represents the 22 resulting soundscapes, produced through conversations with over two dozen Port Hopians of all ages. The soundscapes are collaged from of snippets of conversation, site field recordings and found sounds.  Strata-Walking Port Hope provides a glimpse into the memories, stories, histories, and sonic environments of Port Hope.

Below is a sampling of some of the soundscapes.

Map/App Interface design and soundscape editing
by T.Ng-Chan
Drawings by Donna Akrey



Bandshell

In the park downtown is a bandshell, where Port Hopians gather in the summer to listen to music and play.



Main Street

Every town has a Main Street. 



Factory

Some stories about the Factory…

This project was made possible with funding from Ontario Trillium Foundation. 

Critical Mass: A Centre for Contemporary Art brings contemporary art to our community for all to experience because we believe art stirs our feelings and challenges how we see the world and our place within it. Their mission for the 2020 Port Hope Soundscapes project is to provide socially-engaged sound artists with an opportunity to play an active role in our community — creating art experiences that will help shape the cultural vibrancy of Port Hope.
http://criticalmassart.com/soundscape-project-overview/

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Synesthesia Walk

During the walk, HPU members perambulated through the Hamilton Farmer’s Market with a rough map in hand. Their task was to document the different “scents” they smelled within the market using words associated with another sense modality.

Synesthesia is a literary device wherein the writer uses words associated with one sense modality to describe another eg. “loud yellow” (aural/sight), “burning silence” (haptic/aural), “bitter cold” (taste/haptic), “piercing fragrance” (haptic/smell). Lots of poets use synesthesia as a literary technique in their writings – notably, Baudelaire who was also one of the friendly flâneurs!  

Synesthesia is also a psychological “pathology.” Members of the HPU are not trying to become synesthetes. We are interested in finding new ways of using language to describe place.

Donna’s Map: Deterritorialising the senses! 
Sarah’s Map: Deterritorializing language!
Taien’s Map: Deterritorializing territorialization!

The participants found this task difficult, but fun. Several noted “sensory overload” part way through the walk.

Please! Please!!! Don’t smell the Sausage.
Curious market patrons want to join the HPU
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Ongoing Project: Word Walks

“WORD WALKs” is an initiative from HPU that anyone can do. As you meander however through the city, take photos of words that catch your eye/mind. Arrange them into a poster—a slideshow—a story—by colour—by meaning….as a collage—whatever you like. Send it to us and we’ll post it here…video, pdf, jpg, gif, film…whatever digital means you like. I have been making Haiku (as is my way) which is poetry arranged in syllables—first line 5 syllables, 2nd 7 syllables and the final 5 again (5, 7, 5).

“WORD WORKs” is the first public invite for work you can do solo. We will be doing more of these in time. Join in whenever you like.

Thanks
Donna Akrey, HPU

wordwalk-haiku from Hamilton Perambulatory Unit on Vimeo.

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stratawalks walks

Zoom of Doom

A Sense of Impending Doom: A Strata-walk for Turbulent times

The last few months of social distancing and general uncertainty about the future have generated a new appreciation for collectivity, closeness, and community. As we are separated from each other and travelling is no longer a viable option, how can we find ways to share and connect through a sense of beingness, while remaining in the safety of our own homes?

The Art & Cartography Commission of the International Cartographic Society, in partnership with the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit, presented an online “walkshop” in July 2020, as part of the conference Drifting Bodies/Fluent Spaces. The event investigated the act of mapping and situating ourselves, confronting our anxieties, as well as tuning in to what brings us comfort in our own space. The group of 30 participants, located all over the world, connected and sensed each other in unique ways through a series of analog mapping exercises that took place in the virtual space of Zoom. Using simple tools in their vicinity, such as a piece of paper, a camera, and a marker, the participants captured their bodies in space, the sky above their heads, as well as their relationships and emotions to their environment.

Visit the website to view the traces and outcomes of the workshop: https://impendingdoomwalk.wordpress.com/
​
​Watch the video documentation of the full workshop, featuring various perspectives – from the bird’s-eye view of the zoom grid to the close-ups of the personal and intimate moments.

A Sense of Impending Doom: A Strata-Walk for Turbulent Times from Taien Ng-Chan on Vimeo.

Want to participate?

It’s not too late and we hope that the archive will keep growing! Discover new and unique ways to experience mapping the space that surrounds you by following the set of exercises listed on the “Outcomes” page. Send your emotional and sensorial Strata-Map to hamiltonperambulatoryunit@gmail.com.

​Drifting bodies/ fluent spaces is an international meeting/conference on walking arts in relation to the liquid bodies that cross the landscape. Focusing on intermedia and embodied practices, the project enables a site-specific creation-research laboratory about the relations between walks and dérives, sounds and silences, void and occupied places, digital and bodily spaces, and their walking narrations and translations. https://walk.lab2pt.net/

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stratawalks walks

Tokyo Olympic Sites

​Reclaiming Through Mapping: The Olympic Sites of Tokyo

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) Commission on Art & Cartography organized the Pre-Conference Workshop “Reclaiming through Mapping: Olympic Sites of Tokyo” in July 2019. Some of these spaces, including the main conference venue, are on reclaimed land or artificial islands in Tokyo Bay built out of waste landfill. This workshop investigated the question of how place is constructed and mapped, using an experimental methodology developed by the artist-research collective Hamilton Perambulatory Unit, who led a participatory mapping walk in Tokyo that looks to uncover the layers of urban development history of the 2 Tokyo Olympics and the high-growth (1964) and post-growth (2020) periods they represent. This interdisciplinary workshop used hybrid spatial and sensory ethnography and intermedial approaches to map a site and distinguish the layers of time, history, materiality, and digital city-image. Participants contributed to the final multi-media strata-map of Tokyo’s Olympic sites.

Watch a video documentation shot and edited by Sarah Choi: 

Commission for Art & Cartography with the Hamilton Perambulatory Unit, Tokyo, 2019 (Sarah Choi) from Hamilton Perambulatory Unit on Vimeo.

To begin this two-day workshop, the participants met at the Tokyo Metropolitan University for short presentations to contextualize the experimental and sensory mapping methodologies, before continuing the discussion on the trains while heading towards the Toyosu fish market for lunch (45min from Akihabara). They then visited the nearby construction site of the Athlete’s Village on Harumi Island while receiving background history on the area, and spent some time mapping the site. On the second day, they met at one of the 1964 Olympic sites to further explore mapping methodologies before heading back to Tokyo Metropolitan University to share results. The data collected helps answer the following research questions:

How does the official Olympic narrative affect the sites?

How do experimental cartographies work to investigate how place is constructed?

Strata-Maps Day 1: Harumi Island

Strata-Maps Day 2: Yoyogi

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stratawalks walks

Detroit River Borderlands

Strata-Mapping the Detroit River Border

See workshop

Buoyant Cartographies was a workshop co-hosted by the In/Terminus Research Group (Lee Rodney and Michael Darroch), Float School (Justin Langlois and Holly Schmidt), and the HPU, investigating the Detroit River border through strata-mapping and other methodologies. Some of the resulting workshop booklets, maps and videos were exhibited as part of “The Living River Project: Art Water and Possible Worlds” at the Art Gallery of Windsor (curated by Stuart Reid and Patrick Mahon) from October 26, 2018 – January 29, 2019.

Taien Ng-Chan published an essay on the Buoyant Cartographies workshop in Windsor-Detroit: erudit.org/en/journals/im/2019-n34-im05439/1070880ar/

Abstract:
The Hamilton Perambulatory Unit (HPU)’s strata-mapping framework is an experimental research-creation practice that focuses on how spatial meaning is created through a performative “stratigraphic” sensing and researching of a site. The international border between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario makes an especially compelling site for experimental cartographies in light of the conflicts over borders and walls in the current political environment. At the southernmost tip of the Great Lakes system, we focused our attention on this river border as a material site and geopolitical space: it enabled us to investigate alternate possibilities for sensing and envisioning the layered and conjoined histories of this fluid space. The Ojibwe name for this location is waawiiatanong ziibi, “where the river bends,” suggesting a radically different spatial imaginary than the divided space that has been established through colonial and national histories. Experimental cartographies can thus help to develop alternate ways of experiencing such sites, an initial step towards decolonizing the spatial imaginary through a project of delinking. In September 2018, we conducted a workshop entitled Buoyant Cartographies, focusing on a performative and intermedial investigation into spatial meanings and their construction on Peche Island, which sits in the middle of the Detroit River. This was one of three Detroit River sites investigated in the workshop, with contributions from workshop organizers and HPU co-conspirator Donna Akrey.

Exhibition

Lee Rodney with Justin Langlois, Buoyant Cartographies: Alternative Mapping Practice on the Detroit River, August 31 – September 1, 2018.
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stratawalks walks

Galway

​Photo credit: Hannah Ackermans

A Strata-Walk in Galway, Ireland as part of the conference Transient Topographies: Space and Interface in Digital Literature and Art
April 21, 2018
Meet at the Moore Institute, Hardiman Research Library, National University of Ireland at Galway

HPU Founding member Taien Ng-Chan led a Strata-Walk around the block in conjunction with an experimental site-specific soundtrack that was made in the 48-hours preceding the conference, and presented a paper on locative media practices.

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stratawalks walks

Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

Presented as part of the artist-projects/conference Art & Social Strata March 24, 2018 at the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre (51 Stuart St, Hamilton).

This public walk and talk takes the area around the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre (WAHC), particularly the newly built West Harbour GO Station, and analyzes the social strata that affects this particular place and space. Strata-Walk (WAHC Version) aims to provide participants with strata-mapping skills in order to highlight the different layers of place that make up Hamilton’s fast-changing downtown core.

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Googlemap City Center Drift

Googlemap City Centre Drift photo collage.

The Googlemap City Center Drift takes as its starting point the spot where Googlemaps has placed its city marker. How does Google Maps decide exactly where the center of a city is? Is it according to the city’s dimensions? Should it be city hall, the cultural center, the financial center? Where do you think the city center should be? And what are the relationships between a digital information space as perceived by a dominant geolocation service such as Google and every day urban space?

In order to investigate these urgent questions, HPU members journeyed to the location, which Google Maps pinpoints as on Young Street, between Catherine Street South and Walnut Street South.

Young St. between Catherine St. South and Walnut St. South.
Hamilton City Centre?

Does this place coincide with what one usually thinks of as a “city center”? We didn’t think so, but then what does? We thought this mound of dirty snow could be the center. ​

Toronto’s city marker falls just shy of its city hall, and that is certainly logical since, given the size of the city, there must be many centers. City hall is a diplomatic choice (as a symbol only however; not as a reference to the hijinks that occur within city hall these days). By contrast, I don’t think Hamilton’s city center is its city hall, or this snow mound on Young Street. To me, it’s Gore Park, especially the corner that angles into Jackson Square. It seems that the city radiates outwards from that intersection. It is always moving, and it is always the same: colourful. But that’s just me. Where do you think city center is?

Corktown, Hamilton ON.

From the seemingly arbitrary spot chosen by Googlemaps as the center of Hamilton, we explored Situationist drift techniques, such as relying on our senses to guide us through the city, identifying areas of “attraction” and “repulsion” as well as “switching stations” that offer opposing directions of choice. We ended up exploring the neighbourhood of Corktown and its historic row houses and old stone buildings, the waterworks building (which we made Sarah investigate), and some interesting streets and underpasses. ​

Map of flows by Sarah Truman.

This is the map Sarah made while we were walking, indicating switching stations, the flows and areas of attraction and repulsion.

The idea for the Googlemap City Center Drift was influenced by artist Aram Bartholl’s project Map, which places giant red Google placemarkers, twenty feet high, in places designated as city center.

Aram Bartholl, Map, 2006–2019.

The beginning point of this walk is more or less arbitrary, as so it seems the Googlemap designation of city center. But the idea of center and margin is always usefully challenged by inquiry into these terms, along with a healthy sense of urban adventure that gets you out into the city, exploring. It could be as simple as a blind jab at a map to designate a starting point.

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stratawalks walks

Montréal Mile-End

HPU led a Strata-Walk (Montreal Mile End Version) as part of the 4th edition of Montréal Monochrome at articule artist-run centre in Montréal. MONTRÉAL MONOCHROME IV: STUDY HALL offered a framework to explore how artistic modes of production can challenge conventional systems of education. It was an opportunity to actively exchange knowledges on alternative, misrepresented and marginalized ways of learning and unlearning.

The theme of this edition signalled a concern with questions about conventional forms and spaces of education, and its intersection with other practices and other modes of cultural production. It indicated a growing interest in a body of artistic production that engages with knowledge production and sites of resistance. By and large, MONTRÉAL MONOCHROME IV: STUDY HALL was an attempt to critically respond to institutionalized education that perpetuates systemic oppression.

Articule
262 Fairmount O.
Montréal, Québec
https://www.articule.org/en/home