Listening Trails are designed landscape
routes that include assemble and order listening sites into
greater compositional wholes. Considering the
spatio-temporal range of sounds, the variety of eco-niches and
their sonic phenomena, intersections with pedestrian routes,
and cumulative sequential experience -- sites, listening
structures and devices are composed as trails. Variations on
the standard nature trail post mark the trail; they are
specially painted in accord with specific environments, and
mark places in the landscape where sounds change.
Crowley Listening Trail
The Crowley Listening Trail was created in
conjunction with, and was concurrent with and part of the
exhibit Brenda Brown , In Situ at Selby Gallery at Ringling College of
Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, some 23 miles west.
This trail made use of another existing trail with
boardwalk ttraversing five distinct habitats -- pine flatwoods,
oak hammock, palm/palmetto dominated creek area, swamp, and
sawgrass marsh. There are also distinctive sub-habitats
within each of these areas; often each has its own
characteristic sounds. Some 22 posts, each painted a
different set of four colors (one color per side) according to
the ambient landscape colors, mark the trail route as well as
places where ambient sounds change. Words stenciled on
the posts' sides provide cues to listening, to the character
and sources of what to listen for, as well as cues concerning
the conditions affecting sounds (such as time of day, light,
temperature and moisture.) Maps on the post caps indicate
where one was on the trail and larger landscape, and their
other images include one of five animals -- red squirrel, grey
fox, bobcat, river otter or raccoon -- who inhabits (and as if
presides) over that particular section of the trail and who, in
one of six languages, admonishes all to listen. The
trail’s five listening devices are based on the two ears
of each of the above animals, and they are located in the realm
that animal inhabits.
(A video, Crowley
Listening Trail, by Darryl
Saffer is available from Brenda Brown Landscape Design Art
Research.)
