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Soundwalking at Night artist: Andra McCartney
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| Recorded on October 25, 2000, this piece was part of a series of night recordings made by Sandra and Andra. Interested in hearing what differences the night produced for the sounding environment, Sandra recorded this excerpt while walking westward from the Atwater Street access point in Montreal. Circumscribed by all the attendant cultural and historical meanings of women walking in the dark, soundwalking at night through trails that exist on the edge of the city, bordering an old industrial zone, can be risky business for women, as Sandra discovered on this night. The sound excerpt is an encounter Sandra had with a young man who rode past her on his bike initially, noticed her walking in the shadows, then turned his bike around and approached her. Fearing potential danger, Sandra stood under a lamp post, under full visibility, while feigning looking for something in her satchel. For Sandra, this encounter reminded her that moving through space is complicated for women, rendering the possibility “ that a woman can observe quietly; detachedly – as one might expect in a soundwalk – almost impossible.” Soundwalking at Night Produced by Andra McCartney |
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| Andra McCartney is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, where she teaches courses in sound production, reflexivity studies, and sound theory. She received her PhD in Music from York University in Toronto, with a dissertation on the soundscape work of Vancouver composer Hildegard Westerkamp. Dr. McCartney has published research on issues of gender, creation, sound, and technology with the Electronic Music Foundation, Organised Sound, Leonardo Music Journal, Musicworks, Axis Voor de Kunsten V/M, Contact!, Array, Resources for Feminist Research, and Borderlines, as well as several edited volumes on gender, technology and creation: Gender and Music, Ghosts in the Machine, Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity, and With A Song in Her Heart. She is a practicing soundwalk artist, leading public walks and creating gallery installations, recordings, performances and radio works. Her work can be heard on the internet, on CBC radio, and on CDs produced by Deep Wireless, Terra Nova, and the Canadian Electroacoustic Community. |