Echo Location is a sound map that is connected to listening and recording walks in particular places, aiming to construct sonic documents of moments in time at specific locations.

It is created by interdisciplinary artist Kathy Hinde in collaboration with digital artist Ed Holroyd. Originally commissioned by Bedford Creative Arts and further developed with Fermynwoods Contemporary Arts. It relates to Kathy and Ed’s piece ‘Twitchr’ which is specifically for recording and mapping birdsong.

The Echo Location soundmap encourages a playful and musical approach to listening to the sound-recordings. Zoom into the map and move around it to frame a particular area and arrangement of markers. Press the play button and see the ‘playhead’ scroll over the section of map and trigger the records as it passes the tags. You can customise the playback settings by choosing the direction the playhead moves, its speed and also change the selection of active markers by filtering them through dates, users or tags.

We would like to invite you to consider the musical qualities of everyday sound.

The Echo Location Soundmap works like a musical score and was inspired by the rolls of paper used to play music on an old fashion player piano or music box. You can add ‘music box notes’ into the playback settings and each marker will trigger different music box notes as if it was a music box score. You can change the scale and start note, and switch between recorded sounds, music box notes or a combination of the two as the sounds play.

As well as playing with the existing soundmap, you can also upload your own recordings by using audioboo, and tagging your sounds “echoloc” which automatically adds them to the soundmap’s evolving, generative soundscape.

You can use audioboo directly with a smartphone, or use another sound recording device and upload to the audioboo website. If you only want to upload part of your recording, audacity is a useful free audio editor.

Echo Location walks are organised in order to bring people together to make sound recordings of a particular places with easy to use digital sound recorders.

Keep checking this site to play the latest Echo Location Sound Map, find out about Echo Location walks and performances and explore the new Sound Map features and developments.