Walking on Water is an interactive guided audio walking tour that aims to connect people with the pleasures of walking in the city of Syracuse, New York.  Syracuse has been historically mapped divided along class lines, with the Interstate 81 overpass both a monument to that division and an ongoing barrier that prevents meaningful interactions between communities. Being a pedestrian in a city defines civic identity in a unique way, and opens the walker to connections that cannot be made by other forms of transport.

Walking On Water began with the prompt to engage Syracuse University students with a rich, ongoing civic story and to encourage walking as way of interfacing with the city. Through collaborations with members of the university community on historical narratives, re-enactments and performances, which are documented on the tour, Walking on Water addresses the divide between the university community and the city at large.

The tour takes walkers from the Community Folk Art Center, to Water Street and Almond, and then back again. During the exhibit, participants are lent an Ipod, and a map of the walk, with indications of where to cue audio tracks. Additionally, the tour can be accessed at any time from a Smartphone, as placards with QR codes printed on them are placed along the route.  When scanned, these codes send them to a link and to the site-specific story.

Walkers are encouraged to share their own story of the area, and a recording booth will be available at the exhibition. Additionally, interviews are being conducted with residents and business owners along the route, adding to the narrative texture and creating a multivalent story of a street that could be so easily overlooked.

Walking On Water is an open-ended, constantly shifting public art piece, directed through the tour, delivered by the narratives and enacted by each walker.  Later in the exhibition several group performance events along the route will occur; including the singing of the Erie Canal song by Orange Appeal, a Syracuse University A cappella group.

For the project blog CLICK HERE

For a sample of the tour CLICK HERE

For an article that was published in the Connective Corridor Newsletter CLICK HERE

Walking on Water is a collaboration between Nathaniel Sullivan and Jay Muhlin, both graduate students at Syracuse University in the college of Visual and Performing Arts, Department of Transmedia.