Returning to Hilly Fields. What does a place sound like now versus memory?

Why Hilly Fields?

Hilly Fields is a place I return to for its sounds. This project starts from a simple question: is the place I remember the same as the place I record? Hilly fields is a hill side park that overlooks the city, some of my first memories of being in London evolve around early walks through the trees. One specific sound I remember was the noise of the distant hum of the city, that distance is what made Hilly Fields a sedative place for me to unwind. I want to work with the sound scape of Hilly Fields because I would like to challenge the memory of these familiar noises and experiment if listening back to audio or manipulating can bring new changes.

Research question

How does listening to Hilly Fields now, through field recordings change or challenge my memory of it? I quite like working with how sonic memory evokes a sense emotion. You could be half way around the world but you hear the same bell that used to ring for lunch at your old nursery. That evokes a feeling and a response, how often are we effected by familiar noises? How can the feeling effect our lives?

Memory soundscape (The before)

Context

Hildgarde Westerkamp is a Canadian composer and acoustic ecologist who believes sound walking is much more than taking a walk whilst noticing sounds, its about changing ones relationship to a place. Westerkamp believes that every sound says something in the environment in which it occurs and this gives us an opportunity to analyse as listeners. When we look at a landscape we tend to experience our selves as observers looking at something. Sound works differently, we are acoustically immersed into our surroundings. Westerkamp describes becoming conscious that we are always inside a soundscape and that listening makes that relationship stronger.

Bibliography

Hagood, M. (2026) “Listening Deeply: Field Recording, Soundwalking, and the Poetics of Place w/ Hildegard Westerkamp,” Phantom Power Podcast. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJzYSXWKccg (Accessed: September 30, 2026).