"Winter Walking" is an artistic performance related to a 4-month daily walking practice I embarked on while experiencing winter in Canada in 2022. The piece is a response to my attempt at multispecies listening, combining the sounds of snow, ice, footsteps, magpies, coyotes, and other beings and writers with whom I was in listening conversation. I first created "Winter Walking" as an 8-channel sound piece at the University of Alberta's Sound Studies Institute. The track here is a stereo (2-channel) version designed for participatory walking. Take a listen and walk along!

Winterwalking - Stereo

Written during the month of September 2022, each of these text scores is an invitation to listen beyond our ears: with our hands, with our feet, through walking or writing, drawing or stitching. 

The September Scores were first exhibited, as an audio piece with accompanying digital prints, at my solo exhibition, Invitations to Listen, at the Mulvane Art Museum, January-June 2023

September Scores: Invitations to Listen

Re-Membering/Re-Presencing is a stereo composition for a site-specific multi-channel sound installation at the Ford Calumet Environmental Center, located in Big Marsh. The installation is composed of field recordings from Big Marsh, Marian R. Byrnes Park, and Jeffery Manor, as well as sonified data taken from plants on-site and datasets of soil, air, water, and community demographics.  The field recordings at these sites include recordings of animals, singing insects, plants, wind, and water, as well as the sounds of the community, including those made by people, such as traffic, drag races, fireworks, block parties, and other everyday activities that comprise the Black community in Jeffery Manor. The data collected are from the US Census, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The data is then sonified using TwoTone. The data I am gathering is specific to the Jeffrey Manor and the SouthDeering community area. My research on Black Migration/population, soil contamination, air quality, water quality, and local demographics. The design of the front gallery, displaying the history, wildlife, and ecology of the park and of the Calumet Region offer a visual experience
that I can enhance and reinforce with my sound installation. Re-Membering/Re-Presencing
offers the listeners, patrons, and participants a space to re-member and re-connect via the sonic
feedback and interplay with the Ford Center’s front gallery, which displays the history and
pre-settler history of Big Marsh and the Calumet Area.

Re-Membering/Re-Presencing

Caged Bird Mix 1

SHOFAR - Creepshore Sounds - Chicago Poetry Center - 6/30/25

LIONS - Creepshore Sounds - Chicago Poetry Center - 6/30/25 - ALL

Nothing is Good or Bad - workinprogress

Light box loop

Many Thanks to Todd Carter for inviting me to DJ this set! I had a great time! This is a radio performance of soundscapes from my piece Re/Presencing layered upon soundscapes from Jackson Park and 63rd St Beach, time folded in on itself with echoes of Ida B. Wells writings on the absence of the black body at this site mixed with recordings from Lou Harrison, Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Exploding Star Orchestra,  Robert AA Lowe, Anthony Braxton and Josh Abrams. My expectation is that this piece gives us the space to contemplate and meditate on our own presence.

            Jackson Park was an integral part of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. 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 all across America.  She also highlights the progress of African Americans since the emancipation as equally important and intertwined with the progress of America. Recently, there has been an effort to restore the dune ecology at the 63rd Street beach, and the restoration of the Wooded Isle. Jackson Park and the beach is also an active hub for recreation and cultural activity in the community. I have been recording a diverse body of programmatic, architectural and ecological spaces that comprise Jackson Park.  These programs and site offers us a re-presencing  in the face of an abscencing of the black body due to violence, corrupt criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex. 

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

Double Concerto: Epicuros - Double concerto : for violin and cello with Javanese gamelan - Lou Harrison - Soundscapes [sound recording] : works by Lou Harrison, Henry Cowell, Paul Reale - 

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

Make Way To The City / The Arc Of Slavery #72, Galactic Parables: Volume 1 - Exploding Star Orchestra 

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

Magick Creek - We Know Each Other Somehow - Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe* & Ariel Kalma

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

On The Beach - On The Beach- Philip Cohran And The Artistic Heritage Ensemble

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

Represencing - Represencing - Joshua Abrams

re/presencing - Norman W. Long

Side 1 Cut 2 - Creative Orchestra Music 1976 - Anthony Braxton

Walking 2 - for hyde park - Norman W. Long


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BelAir Radio Presents Norman W. Long Re/Presencing Performance & DJ set

Sheil Park OPERA Free Trees Singing

Bill Withers and Lil Wayne meet in Jamaica, with Robin Thicke, Bob Marley & The Wailers, The Who, Nightsource, Tamlins, Edwin Starr, and Spoon along for the ride.

Light box loop

Sara Zalek

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