ONLINE ECOSYSTEM
WAC 2021 Windwalkers, Project -Windwalking -Image credit – Jock Maitland
The WALC project raises awareness of natural and rural territories by positioning walking as a contemporary artistic practice. By highlighting walking arts as relational, ecological, and community-based, WALC expands artistic formats and fosters new cultural participation connected to landscape and local communities.
A central element is a digital ecosystem, developed with walk · listen · create (WLC), which links online space with outdoor environments and walking arts. This allows participation from geographically dispersed communities, while enhancing the visibility and innovation of rural and natural art venues.
Instead of large-scale events that risk disrupting local ecologies, WALC combines small, locally embedded physical activities with a robust digital platform. The platform serves both as a dissemination tool and as an experimental environment, exploring emerging technologies, relational practices, and ecological approaches to art-making in the 21st century.
This ecosystem composes of:
an online community space;
an interactive meeting environment with user profiles, posts, announcements, agendas, newsletters and events;
as well as a dynamic digital archive documenting the artworks and processes generated during WALC.
This ecosystem brings together several interconnected components: the central WALC online environment hosted by walk · listen · create (WLC);
the WALC online course, a horizontal learning environment, coordinated by Locative Media Supercluster;
and an interactive geolocated mapping platform and web application that visualises the people, places and artistic trajectories of WALC across Europe
These elements complement the physical programme by offering training, workshops, and collaborative opportunities for artists, cultural professionals, and communities across Europe and beyond, boosting knowledge exchange, audience development, and long-term engagement.
As a living online environment, the platform documents WALC’s progress while attracting new partners and collaborators, ensuring sustainability and creating a long-term digital commons for walking arts practices.
Special focus is given to virtual reality and locative media, emerging fields in contemporary art. Using collaborative processes and software integrating spatial data, movement, mapping, and augmented reality (via the interactive geolocated mapping platform CGeomap, WALC creates hybrid installations that link distant landscapes and walking communities in shared digital environments.