All Walks of Life: The Poetics of Walking in Public Space

What if the city has always been speaking, but we have forgotten how to listen?

All Walks of Life is an interactive sound installation that invites people to notice the city differently. The project is inspired by everyday elements in New York City, such as pigeons, rats, steam vents, traffic lights, scaffolding, and street objects. These familiar urban presences are translated into handmade ceramic sculptures.

When visitors approach and interact with the sculptures, they trigger layered city soundscapes collected through my walks in New York. The sounds do not always match the objects directly, creating small moments of surprise and shift in perception. Through touch, sound, and movement, the installation encourages visitors to slow down, listen more closely, and become more aware of the human and nonhuman presences that shape everyday walking in the city.

The project began from my daily walks in New York City, where I became interested in the ordinary things that quietly shape how we move: pigeons, rats, steam vents, traffic lights, scaffolding, subway lamps, street signs, and other small urban presences that often disappear into the background.

Through walking and sound recording, I collected fragments of the city’s atmosphere: footsteps, wind, crosswalk signals, underground vibrations, construction noise, birds, passing traffic, and the shifting rhythm of public space. These sounds became the foundation of the installation.

The work is composed of handmade ceramic sculptures based on temporal objects found throughout New York City. I chose ceramic because it carries a tension between presence and fragility. It is physical and tactile, but also breakable and sensitive to process. This quality reflects the city objects I was studying. They may seem familiar or stable, but many are temporary, overlooked, worn down, replaced, or constantly changing.

When visitors approach and interact with the sculptures, they trigger layered urban soundscapes. The sounds do not always match the objects directly. A pigeon may carry the sound of wind above the street. A manhole may reveal activity below ground. A traffic signal may become less about instruction and more about rhythm, pause, and collective movement. These small mismatches create moments of perceptual shift, asking visitors to listen again and reconsider what they think they already know.

Rather than presenting the city as a fixed background for human activity, All Walks of Life treats it as a shared environment shaped by human and nonhuman presences. Through touch, sound, movement, and ceramic form, the installation encourages visitors to slow down, pay attention, and sense the overlooked relationships that exist within everyday walking. The project asks how a small shift in attention might change the way we move through the city, and what becomes audible when we begin to listen more carefully.