Becoming Listening Bodies: Soundwalking as a Pedagogy of Sensation.

This paper explores the potentials of biosensing technologies in the construction of new methods and conceptualisations of sound walking as an arts-based research practice. We draw on our collaborative research project the Listening Body, which has involved a series of sound walks with children (aged 6-10) attending an after-school visual arts program in Hulme, Greater Manchester, UK. The sound walks have enabled children to develop creative listening practices through playful experiments and sonic interventions within a range of local environments and public spaces. In order to research the affective and embodied dimensions of the sound walks with children, we collected data from wearable biosensors (Empatica E4), body-mounted GoPro cameras, and high fidelity sound recording equipment. Rather than taking a clinical or reductive approach, our use of these technologies is aligned with creative, critical, and socially engaged applications of wearable biosensors in the fields of contemporary art (Umbrellium, 2017; Nold, 2009), participatory design (Coenen, Coorevitz, Lievens, 2015) and human-computer interaction (Schnadelbach et al, 2014). We believe that the Listening Body is one of the first projects to explore the creative and pedagogical potentials of biosensing technologies through collaborative arts-based research with children.