HEAR BELOW: My Pedway Soundwalk 2022

Self-Guided and Small-Group Guided Soundwalks in Chicago’s Pedway System

This year’s installment of HEAR BELOW will take place during the month of March. Sign up to participate in a small-group guided soundwalk below.

Click for HEAR BELOW Soundwalk Tools and Materials.

Click to Register for a HEAR BELOW Small-Group Guided Soundwalk.

Click to Share feedback on a HEAR BELOW Small-Group Guided Soundwalk.

Wayfinding in the Illinois Center, Hear Below 2020. Pictured: Lindsey French (center) and Eric Leonardson (right). Photo credit, Adrian Wood.

March 2022 • Self-Guided and Small-Group Guided Soundwalks

For a fourth consecutive year, NON:op Open Opera Works and Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology team up to offer HEAR BELOW: a subterranean, site-specific soundwalk through Chicago’s Pedway system. This year’s COVID-conscious, self-guided installment of HEAR BELOW, titled “My Pedway Soundwalk” invites participants to rediscover the act of listening and to share their experiences using audio, video, still images and text.

What do you hear? My Pedway Soundwalk takes place in March 2022, and is an invitation to discover what listening means to YOU in these unusual sonic spaces and to share your experiences with us. On this page and the pages listed in the menu above right, My Pedway Soundwalk provides simple tools and inspiration to create your own soundwalk. Tools include: Pedway map, routes, points of sonic interest, photos, and short sound files, as well as a complete binaural sound recording for the ultimate social distancing experience. Record your personal experience using audio, video, still images, and text, and share it with us at non [at] nonopera [dot] and we will share your experience with the world. In addition, you may participate in one of our guided soundwalks. Click HERE or on Guided Soundwalk in the menu for more information and to sign up.

HEAR BELOW: My Pedway Soundwalk is co-produced by NON:op Open Opera Works and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology with support from Chicago Architecture Center.

Guided Soundwalks with Teaching Artists

Throughout the month of March we will host several soundwalks with the teaching artists and soundwalk designers listed below. In order to follow Covid guidelines, all soundwalks will be limited to 6-8 participants. Click HERE for more information and to sign up for one of these soundwalks.

Land Acknowledgement

As you walk through the Chicago Pedway, keep in mind that the Pedway and the City of Chicago are located on the ancestral homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Many other tribes such as the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Sac, and Fox also called this area home. This region has long been a center for Indigenous people to gather, trade, and maintain kinship ties. Today, one of the largest urban American Indian communities in the United States resides in Chicago. Members of this community continue to contribute to the life of Chicago and to celebrate their heritage, practice traditions, and care for the land and waterways. Try to imagine the natural features and characteristics of these geographies, and try to hear in your minds ear what this land might have sounded like 100, 300, or 500 years ago.

Teaching Artists and Soundwalk Designers

Andy Slater
Andy Slater is a Chicago based media artist and disability advocate. Founder of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and director of the Sound as Sight accessible field recording project, his current work features the sounds of antiquated assistive technology, field recordings, spatial audio design for virtual and augmented reality, video games, and film. Andy has a Masters in Sound Arts and Industries from Northwestern University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has performed and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, University of Chicago, Contemporary Jewish Museum San Francisco, Ian Potter Museum of Art Melbourne, Australia, Critical Distance Toronto, Flux Factory New York City, Art Institute of Chicago, Experimental Sound Studio, and others. Andy was a 2018 3Arts/Bodies of Work fellow at the university of Illinois Chicago and High Concept Labs artist in residence 2016-2020.

Jeanette Dominguez
Jeanette Dominguez is a graduate student in the MA in Sound Arts and Industries program at Northwestern University, where she is expanding and utilizing her skillset to develop dynamic media in public programming. Jeanette’s practice converges at field recording, multimodal storytelling, sound production, and design. Jeanette is especially interested in amplifying narratives focused on placemaking and eco-identity formation.

Eric Leonardson
Eric Leonardson, a Chicago-based audio artist, serves as President of the World Listening Project, President of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and President of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. He is Associate Professor Adjunct in the Department of Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). As a performer, composer, and sound designer, Leonardson created sound with the Chicago based physical theater company Plasticene (1995-2012). Leonardson performs internationally with the Springboard, a self-built instrument made in 1994 and often presents on acoustic ecology to new audiences beyond art world contexts; engaging and connecting communities in the interrelated aspects of sound, listening, and environment.

Christophe Preissing
Mr. Preissing is the founder and artistic director of NON:op Open Opera Works whose mission it is to engage and enable lost, neglected, and suppressed voices to be heard through participatory, immersive, and interactive programs that welcome creative contributions from all who choose to create. Christophe is a sound composer, intermedia artist, curator, and producer, who creates sound that focuses on the space between and among art forms and artists. His work investigates non-hierarchical relationships among materials, co-creators, and audiences. An avid field recordist, Christophe may be found audio spelunking in abandoned industrial buildings, collecting sound in field and vale, or dumpster diving for sound objects. He has produced shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois Institute of Technology, Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, among others. Recent sound installations include Blood Lines: Remembering the 1919 Chicago Race Riots at Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park, Chicago; Portrait of Carrie Sandahl with painter Riva Lehrer at the Evanston Art Center; SUS: the long thin wire, and Street Sheets in collaboration with Hugh Sato and Mario Gonzalez, Jr. at Columbia University in New York. With NON:op, Christophe was an Experimental Sound Studio ARP recipient in 2017 and a High Concept Labs artist 2019-2020.

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events and Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.