The Walkings installation was a collaboration that included projected images of 24 texts which were spoken over the solo piano music of Bill Duckworth’s The Time Curve Preludes. Four speakers on pedestals were situated around the room. They played simultaneously, evoking The Preludes’ fugal structure, with the narration echoing themes of memory, loss, friendship, art, rumination and places in time and history. Texts and voice by AJSabatini. Media artist Robert Kilman produced the audio soundscape and 24 video or audio “snapshots” that were triggered by QR symbols on the back of postcards. A table with 24 postcards was set in the center of the room. Each postcard referred to a walking event (many of which were alluded to in the songs) and visitors were invited to scan the QR symbol and link to Kilman’s video or audio snapshots, which provided a parallel journey to experience. Kilman also shot luminous slow running films of the sunrise and sunset over Phoenix that filled opposite walls of the gallery. Within walking distance, there were larger QR posters as part of the exhibition. We plan to recreate a large-scale citywide version of the The Walkings in the future.
In hallways, the library and other sites, large posters with QR images were inserted in Kilman’s vividly imagined collages. Pompeii, Paris, Philadelphia were a few of the places traversed in The Walkings. Trees, music, conversations, odd references to magic and philosophies of walking appeared in the texts and images.