Presencing: A Soundwalk through Jackson Park

Presencing: A Soundwalk through Jackson Park

MSAE Member Practice — Norman W. Long

Norman W. Long has been a longtime board member of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and a sustained contributor to its mission of fostering deep listening as a cultural, ecological, and community-based practice. Over many years, Norman has helped shape MSAE’s programs, partnerships, and public presence while maintaining an active artistic practice rooted in soundwalks, field recording, and collaborative performance. His work reflects a deep engagement with place, history, and social context—values central to MSAE’s approach to acoustic ecology. The following report documents Presencing, a soundwalk led in Chicago’s Jackson Park in August 2025, developed in part through Norman’s artist residency at the Hyde Park Arts Center, where the project was supported and shared as part of his 2024–25 residency.

Presencing is a Jackson Park soundwalk from The Garden of the Phoenix on the Wooded Island to 63rd St Beach, inspired by Ida B. Wells’ writings. Jackson Park was the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Ida B. Wells published “The Reason Why The Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition. The Afro-American’s Contribution to Columbian Literature”. This pamphlet protests the absence of African Americans at the fair and also protests the booming prison-industrial complex and lynching of black men and women all across America. She also highlights the progress of African Americans since emancipation as equally important and intertwined with the progress of the United States. Norman performed a live mix of field recordings from Jackson Park with vocalist Cher Jey at Experimental Station as part of WHPK’s “Pictures and Sounds” event in 2019. Norman completes this cycle with a soundwalk.

Recently, there has been an effort to restore the dune ecology at 63rd Street Beach, as well as the restoration of Wooded Isle. The Obama Presidential Library is also being constructed on this parkland. Jackson Park and the beach have been an active hub for recreation and cultural activity in the community for generations. Norman will lead us through the changing soundscape, which includes a diverse body of programmatic, architectural, and ecological spaces that comprise Jackson Park., Norman has led sound walks in Washington Park in 2015 as part of the Night Out in the Parks Program and 2021, as part of the Chicago Architectural Biennial, in Woodlawn and Jackson Park. This walk through the park offers us an opportunity to connect with our environment. Listening together as a group serves as a re-presencing in the face of social-media algorithms disrupting and disconnecting us and an absence-ing of Black and Brown bodies due to gentrification, anti Black and anti-immigrant violence, the corrupt criminal justice system, and the prison-industrial complex.