We are shouting from the roof tops about Sound Walk Sunday that launches on Sunday 1 September and runs throughout the following month.
We thought it was only fair to give our co-producers and partners a chance to tell you a little about who they are and their interest in supporting Sound Walk Sunday. Last week we gave our blog over to co-producer and multi-media artist Geert Vermeire, plus read about George Fort from Placecloud, one of our platform partners. This week we hand this post over to co-producer Babak Fakhamzadeh and platform partner Josh Kopeček who gives an insight of what his platform ECHOES can offer you. Read on..
In Babak‘s own words…
As we more and more rely on the same tools when traveling, we more and more end up with 
the same experience, while longing for something unique. This is why I work on apps like Dérive app, The Museum of Yesterday, and others, inspired by the ideas of the Situationists, facilitating experiences that are unique and can not be replicated.
Travel typically mostly focuses on the visual; things you have to see when going somewhere. Often, auditory experiences, things you hear, are undervalued, though, perhaps more so than the visual aspects of a place, what a place sounds like, is unique and overlooked (ha!).
To me, it’s not only the novelty factor, if you will, that makes a sound walk conceptually attractive. One aspect that intrigues me about facilitating a listening experience is that it is difficult to ‘speed up’. You can scrub through a video to get the gist of its contents. You can’t scrub through audio to do the same. Yes, you can speed up audio a bit, but it quickly becomes incomprehensible. To experience sound, you have to sit back, or, go for a stroll, and listen.
Though that, sound walks not only facilitate a more unique experience, they also tie into the rising trend of slow tourism. You should go on a sound walk right now!
Babak Fakhamzadeh. https://babakfakhamzadeh.com
What is ECHOES? as told by Josh Kopeček….
ECHOES is a web platform and app that enables anyone to virtually publish and experience audio, completely free, without any advertising. We use GPS to embed the audio into the landscape, placing it anywhere our creators want to. All you need is a smartphone, some headphones, and the time to get out to all the places and experience all of those incredible
creations!
How you can use ECHOES
Get signed up at at our website – then start creating! What you make is completely up to you. ECHOES is a ‘content-agnostic’ platform; we don’t place any restrictions on the type of experiences you make, so people all over the world have created guided tours, walking audio experiences, sound art installations, audio map archives and much more using ECHOES. All the walks are available through our app – the nearest walks will appear in the app the first time you open it.
Be a part of what we do!
We are open – that means free, and we involve our community in what we do. We want to stay that way, which is why we launched an OpenCollective page to help support us in perpetuity. If you love what ECHOES does and would like to see us grow, join us here: 
https://opencollective.com/echoes
ECHOES’ involvement in Sound Walk Sunday 2019
Andrew Stuck, founder of the Museum of Walking, approached us to see if we were interested in getting involved with Sound Walk Sunday 2019 and we jumped at the chance! ECHOES is a natural fit for Sound Walk Sunday – many people have published sound walks, sound art and all kinds of incredible creations on ECHOES already.
Many of the performances created for SWS will be published on ECHOES – it’s easy to search for a walk in the app, or have a look on our website.
We’ll be promoting walks throughout the festival, so keep an eye on our social media accounts for what to do and where, but while you’re waiting, why not see what’s near you now? Just open the ECHOES app and check!
Check out ECHOES here: https://echoes.xyz
We would like to thank Marcin Barski of IPD in Krakow, Poland for writing a wonderful blog piece about making a geo-located sound walk, that Stella Wisdom at the British Library posted in their blogs – here’s a link to it here
All about walking blog posting is unpredictable – if it’s raining biblical downpours then a blog post is more likely to appear, in most other weather conditions we are out walking and not blogging on a keyboard…..