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"A sound artist and musician, Cusack explores the relationship between the sound in an environment, its geography or physical features, and the people living and working there. Peter Cusack ImageHe travels the world to study and collect sounds that uniquely define cultures and ecosystems, from the crack of spring ice breakup on Siberia's Lake Baikal to the sounds of Chernobyl and other sites that have sustained major environmental damage. He is senior lecturer in Sound Arts & Design, London College of Communication, University of Arts London."

"The format of 'Path of Awareness_Elephant and Castle' explores an individual's personal experience of space through walking, particularly the interplay between sound event (footsteps) and surrounding architecture, influenced by the constantly changing interactions in the environment. A route created around the college of communication offers numerous opportunities to engage with the city's dynamics. Walking itself, the sonic character of footwear, the walkability of this urban habitat, as well as its architectural and atmospheric qualities are all major features of this soundwalk. My soundful shoes become instruments, soloists in the space, creating a dialogue with the surroundings and situating us sonically in the places we walk."

Sound map by Peter Cusack

The idea for Sonic Bicycle Ride combines Beijing's bicycles - still very evident despite the traffic - with the sampling loudhailers used by street vendors to advertise their wares. These inexpensive devices record eight-second slogans, which playback repeatedly, and loudly, until the batteries go flat. For Sonic Bicycle Ride, eight loudhailers were attached to eight bicycles and used to play specially created sounds as they were cycled around Beijing's streets. Routes were planned through the Xicheng district - an older hutong area crossed by a few busy roads - so that the bikes would be heard in changing combinations, sometimes as one large group, sometimes on their own. The eight layers of sound were designed to be heard separately or to harmonise when brought together. Listeners could follow on their own bikes or stay in one place. Bystanders heard the piece emerging in and out of familiar neighbourhood sounds. "

"Think of your favorite place and you're likely to conjure a picture in your mind -- a landscape not a soundscape. That's because you're not Peter Cusack, a sound artist keenly interested in the intersection of environment and sound. On a recent visit to Duke I asked him about pleasant versus positive sounds, a topic that got him riffing on sonic monoculture and why it's such a negative part of our modern culture."