can a soundwalk ever be simply sound?

I took part in a 'soundwalk' from the main conference building to the Whitworth Art Gallery at the Beyond Text? Conference last weekend.
A large group of us took the walk through the campus in the steady rain. We were advised to walk in silence and told that a true soundwalk should be taken in isolation, such that you should be unable to hear other people's footsteps. Alas in this case it was not to be, one of the female members of the group had clip-clop high heels on which resonated in the empty corridors between buildings.
It was an interesting experience, perhaps more so as I became aware, not of sound, but of the haptic nature of the environment. Apart from the clip-clop of shoes the most distinct sounds to me was the gentle insistent patter of the rain and the fading in and out of road traffic as we walked closer and further from the main road.

However, as we walked my bag (containing my impractically heavy laptop, 3 books, notebook, brick of a phone, wallet etc) became heavier with each step, digging into my shoulder. I could feel the rain hitting my waterproof jacket and my hair and face. I felt the texture of the road beneath my (also impractical) thin soled boots and, once we reached the muted peace of the park, the squelchy soft mud underfoot.

Back in the conference, a interminably long closing session speech noted that someone (I didn't catch who) suggested that there is only one sense - touch. I.e. sound physically hits eardrums. It was only then that I realised that I had failed to listen after the first couple of minutes of the soundwalk and simply noted what was important to me. I query whether sound means much in isolation - in our Western culture anyway. Does anyone go to hear a band nowadays? Whenever I go to a gig it's a case of 'going to see a band'. After all I can hear them much better on CD and mp3. To me, sound is only one element - without the visual I lose interest.

In fact, I have to confess I fell asleep at one of Steven Feld's talks. He was playing a recording of water and sleigh bells. The concert hall was dark and the sounds so relaxing...

But maybe that's just me.

Beyond Text? Not that I could see...

I'm just back from Manchester, having attended 'Beyond Text? Image:Voice::Sound:Object Synaesthetic and Sensory Practices in Anthropology' conference, part of the 10^th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film.
I was intrigued and amazed to note how reliant all the speakers were on text. Bar a couple of examples, I was stunned to hear entire academic papers read verbatim. As a result, I found them impossible to follow (and not simply because of the jargon-packed language). Many of the papers overran their time slot, and the ones that did manage it only accomplished the time keeping due to their ability to rattle off in excess of 250 words per minute, rendering their speech virtually unintelligible.
This text dominance seemed particularly ironic considering the conference's focus on visual anthropology and its apparent affection towards the visual arts.
The most refreshing presentation I saw was Tomie Hahn and Curtis Bahn's Sensational knowledge, Sensational Ethnography. They presented a live performance of 'Streams' which seemed to me to epitomise 'Beyond Text'.
In more conventional but less text-based presenations David MacDougall presented visual clips expressing non-visual sensory attributes and Steven Feld spoke about Honk Horn Music in Accra, Ghana.