“Why do we play?
We play for jumpers, passers and shooters.
We play for driveway one-on-ones. Playground heroes. The clutch nets.
We play for ballers. Shot callers. Game changers . Life changers.
For breaking through. Breaking barriers, and paradigms.
We play for chasing the dream. On and off the court.
This is why we play.” (N.B.A Commercial slogan, 2016)
The first time I was told to produce a soundwalk, the only thing I could say for sure was this audio would have to be powerful enough to involve every audience in. The premise was I must be passionate about it first. Thus, I chose The West 4th Street Courts which were commonly known as “The Cage”.
Basketball, a sport I have been persisting for 12 years, a spirit people have been crazy for almost a century, is undoubted powerful in every corners on this planet. “The Cage”, the center of world’s basketball, is Vatican in hearts of all basketball enthusiasts. Before I started working on this project, I had played in The West 4th for a few times and been really drawn by the subculture there. If there were a map of energy levels in New York City, the area of The West 4th must be red. In this project of soundwalk, I want my audience to experience not only the passion and excitement of basketball and The West 4th (considering not everyone loves and is familiar with basketball), but also the sensation about a unique community and its culture (which is even more important than basketball itself).
The first difficulty I encountered was the problem of daylight. There were a lot of players competing in games during the day, nonetheless, the courts would be absolutely empty in the evening. It was tough to let audience experience the competitive atmosphere in empty and quiet courts in such a evening class. This first problem was not solved until I was considering the second one.
The second main problem was to tell an active and lively story to engage the audience in. My original plan was to give an introduction and describe some historical and present stories with facts. For all, no matter how I tried to construct the language andstories, they seemed too dry and boring like a stereotyped lecture to draw audience’s attention and interests. Considering deliberately, I switched my identity in the audio from a third-personal-perspective storyteller to a first-personal-perspective witness. My new name was Kenny Graham, a significant and influential man who participated in founding The West 4th and still led every summer’s basketball tournament in “The Cage”. Hence, the script of this soundwalk turned to be more engaging and emotions more motivating. Till this time, the thought of creating an illusion for audience instead of telling stories finally solved the problem of daylight. Anyway it was an illusion which would have even better performance in the evening. 
There were also many interesting moments while I was producing this soundwalk. Both times I went to The West 4th to record some sounds such as basketball, cheering, traffic, etc., my friends there would notice and feel excited about my recording actions (they thought I was making a movie or a TV show) and intentionally made louder noise, music, shouting, cheering, which was exactly what I needed.
In conclusion, I believe myself have enjoyed a lot both in process and from results of this project and glad that my classmates liked it as well. This project was connected to the first unit of class very well. The concepts of “timeline” and “sound” were clearly demonstrated in class and my works. In the future, I hope I can use some techniques and ideas to apply on architectural design, probably hallucinating or “illusionise” some spaces.
Lastly, remember the initial determination and move on. “This is why we play.”