Sound and Sight Walk on Chicago’s North Shore
2015, sponsored by Alternative Spacetime 1300, Chicago, IL
…If we can only take time to see the beauty in our world, perhaps we will be less disposed to destroy it… Rachel Carson
The Sound and Sight Walk wandered through several far-North Chicago beaches. Using listening/sighting trumpets carved from burls of Box Elder, Elm, Maple and Oak trees, participants were invited to join the walks and listen to Chicago in a more focused way. (A burl is a tree growth in which the wood grain has grown in an abnormal manner due to an injury, either physical or microscopic.) Led by Laura Gilmore, accompanying meditation events invited visitors to Alternative Spacetime 1300 to listen inwardly and outwardly and receive the benefits of quieting the mind. These events took place on the Summer Solstice, June 21st. They sought to remind us to slow down and look inside ourselves at the small moments that we forget have such a large impact on our lives. Participants were invited you to relax and listen to the world; to indulge their minds in the present moment.
"My work has to do with making in relation to seeing and conversing with the world; with issues of perception, how and what we see as we seek to understand the workings of the world. I explore how we experience place and person by amplifying and intensifying ordinary phenomena, things there for everyone to see, but so woven into the fabric of the everyday that they are not usually noticed. I create places and situations for contemplation, for humans to gather, listen and observe. They invite us to slow down and allow us to increase our sensory perception. My work seeks to encourage an aware state of being. I think of Rachel Carson and her great influence on our thinking about the ways we understand the substances we use in our relation to the environment we inhabit. I paraphrase her words here — If we can only take time to see the beauty in our world, perhaps we will be less disposed to destroy it. To this end I seek a cultivation of the gentle and the simple— walking, digging, seeing, hearing, feeling, and putting parts together. My work supports the effort of understanding how things interconnect to make the world work by slowing pace enough to make sense of complexity. I want to transform simple natural occurrences into things mysteriously intriguing enough to inspire others to find their own sense of wonder all around themselves and at any time." Karen McCoy