for Rob

A Short Soundwalk of Forest Hills

Welcome to The Queer and Now, a geolocative audio tour of Northeastern’s LGBTQ history! In this experience, you’ll travel through time and listen to Northeastern students from throughout the decades recount their experiences. Hear interviews with former students, an overview of the time period by a historical expert, and even popular music from the period. Each group of echoes is placed in what was an important location during the students’ time on campus. To experience the full historical narrative, it’s recommended that you begin the experience in front of the YMCA building on Huntington Avenue, in the 1890’s echo, then follow the timeline. If you wish to jump around, or want to complete the experience in multiple pieces, simply click on each echo in the map, and the time period will pop up. Then navigate to the location of whichever echo you want to hear, and the audio will begin automatically.

I recorded this on a rainy day in Boston while walking from NEC to the Christian Science Center. The rain had just begun to fade, so the sound includes both rainfall and the quieter atmosphere afterward.

You realize you've lost your wallet at some point between last night and now. You were at a party last night, so you start your search at the host's, Claire's, apartment, on Columbus next to Ruggles Station.

DESIRE PATH is a sonic walk by Kelly Chen to prompt a reimagining of mobility through interactions with vibrations. This geolocated audio tour is in conversation with themes of public/private, self/other, inside/outside, image/text, and other transgressed dichotomies presented in M’Kenzy Cannon: PLEASE LET ME IN at the Boston Center for the Arts. It explores the body’s relationship with city infrastructure with choreography and gesture. The sound walk combines elements of spoken “scores” and guided listening for the streets around Boston Center for the Arts in the South End, up Tremont Street, including interactions with Berkeley Community Garden and Peter’s Park. DESIRE PATH considers how silence, noise, and mobility function as social conditions by taking part in the sounds and motions produced by organic and industrial processes of South Boston. To plier over fences, saunter across curbs, and relever from pillars to the sounds of construction, cars, fountains, stop lights, and passersby, participants interpret the public dimensions of the space. What does the infrastructure allow you to do? How does it allow you to assemble? How doesn’t it? DESIRE PATH is created on Echos, available for mobile download on the App Store, Google Play, or the web. The walk will also be transcribed and mapped as a downloadable Google Maps coordinate set for accessibility. The walk can be performed in groups, or by oneself.

By : Scot Gresham-Lancaster and Sharath Chandra Ramakrishnan

A collaboration with between Cantabridgian poet Jacques Fleury and Bostonian musician Rachel Devorah Wood Rome. A diverse collection of plants from around the world live together in the Boston Public Garden, embodying the ideals and contradictions of the United States. Heralded as the "first public botanical garden in the United States," this historic site reflects a uniquely American paradox: the aspiration for multicultural democratic inclusivity juxtaposed with the tenants of colonialism. Nature is not left to thrive on its own terms but meticulously curated, shaped to conform to Victorian notions of beauty and order. jaden piblik is an electroacoustic soundwalk setting of Jacques Fleury's Haitian-Creole translation of the English-language poem "Treeness" by Jason Allen-Paisant. The work bridges languages and traditions, resonating with the complex, layered histories embodied in the Public Garden itself. Rachel Devorah Wood Rome is an improvising electronic musician, educator, and labor organizer who machines for their patience and capacity to remember. She is employed as an Assistant Professor of Creative Coding at Berklee College of Music and as Vice President of Full-Time Faculty for MS1140 AFT Massachusetts. https://racheldevorah.studio/ Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Educator and author of four books. He has a degree in Liberal Arts and is pursuing graduate studies in the literary arts through Harvard University. His first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir about life in Haiti and America was endorsed by the Boston Globe. Fleury is prominently featured in newspapers, anthologies, libraries and literary journals worldwide.Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury

“Sonder” is an ancient viral hit — a 2010s neologism coined by John Koenig to describe “the realization that each [...] passerby is living a life as [...] complex as your own”. They’re All Talking repurposes Koenig’s now-cheesy term into a soundwalk, merging it with language and the chronology of Boston. Samples of Native American languages, English and the various languages spoken through waves of immigration are specifically tied to locations around the pond, building a linguistic timeline in the city. The incredible language diversity in the Boston area fuels a phone-in-pocket soundwalk that only allows eavesdropping on languages a listener speaks. The multilingual soundscape leaves one very simple impression of most of its conversations: that everyone, just like you, is talking, talking, talking. Presented at the ICMC 2025.