The Walks vs WAVA

‘The Walks’ is a collection of short audio experiences for special places in your city, as well as an invitation to rediscover and interact with your surroundings. Each audio walk takes just 20 minutes. Set out anytime and decide for yourself how many walks you’d like to take, and in what order. The stories and soundscapes in these short audio adventures resonate all over the world, and in that way, The Walks connects people around the globe in a local experience, bringing them together in the fundamental human act of walking. The pandemic changed the way we look at walking in public space. This ancient and mundane ritual became a central element of the new normal. People meet, walk, stroll through neighbourhoods, play in landscapes, and see their surroundings in new ways with every step. In ‘The Walks’, walking becomes a theatrical framework. An audio-guided walk in the park, a staged visit to the supermarket, or rhythmic aquatic interactions. In each city, voices, sounds, and music transform familiar places into scenes and landscapes into stages through storytelling, dialogues, choreographic explorations and musical and rhythmic variations of the humble walk. Each walk has a short title that indicates where or how it will be performed: “Cemetery”, “Water”, or “Roundabout” The Walks can be activated using a code.

WAVA is an innovative nonprofit platform that reimagines public spaces through augmented reality, making site-specific artworks accessible worldwide through augmented reality. What's on: Apparitions with the 36th Bienal de São Paulo With works by: Maxwell Alexandre, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Michele Ciacciofera, Cevdet Erek, Theo Eshetu, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Ruth Ige, Hamedine Kane, Andrew Roberts, Juliana dos Santos, Ming Smith, Camille Turner, Cici Wu with Yuan Yuan, Vilanismo. WAVA and the 36th Bienal de São Paulo launch a first-of-its-kind global augmented exhibition—bringing the Bienal’s artworks to site-specific locations worldwide, such as Auckland, Badagry, Beijing, Brasilia, Kinshasa, Hong Kong, New York City, Rio de Janeiro, Tijuana/San Diego (on the border), and across São Paulo. Previous exhibitions around Frankfurt am Main are still on view, including works by Yael Bartana, Raafat Hattab, Muhammad Toukhy, Hinda Weiss, Morehshin Allahyari, Tony Cokes, Flaka Haliti, Tamiko Thiel and /p, Les Trucs, Tanya V. Abelson, Florian Adolph, Alex Chalmers, Shaun Motsi, and Kristin Reiman. Stay tuned. There’s always more to come! — Today, every public space is simultaneously an augmented space. Virtual data layering expands the physical space and opens new realms of possibilities. We wish to make this in-between space accessible for artistic interventions by anchoring virtual artworks to specific locations, channelling the ephemeral presence of an interruption or a glitch. Fostering site-specificity and thinking with curatorial dispositions, WAVA aspires to open up the augmented layer to the public and artists alike, serving as a nomadic framework for virtual and physical communal gatherings across different cities and places.