Once upon a time and a very good time it was, for one night every October, four square blocks of Long Beach’s East Village Arts District were transformed into a mellifluous cacophony of dozens of multisensory sound-centric installations, performances, and experiences that defy description. By the time curatorial group FLOOD pulled the plug in 2013, SoundWalk (as it was known) had been around for 10 years — a veritable institution.
Four years later, FLOOD rebooted SoundWalk as soundpedro, working that same sort of site-specific, one-night-only magic to create a unique indoor/outdoor gallery exploiting both natural and anthropogenic possibilities in the rarefied air of Angels Gate Cultural Center.
Do the math, and you find that this year soundpedro also reaches the ripe old age of 10 — so it’s definitely safe to say that San Pedro has its own ear-centric institution. But unlike what happened in Long Beach, soundpedro seems nowhere near going gentle into that good night.
soundpedro2026’s theme, “Tin-,” riffs off the traditional gift for 10-year anniversaries and “reflects on resonance, duration, and transformation from the ringing edge of tinnitus to tolling tintinnabulations, tracing the shifting boundary between signal and noise,” says FLOOD.
A 23-minute video by L.A. Art Documents surveying soundpedro2025.
“Over 20 years, we’ve learned that sound art thrives in the gaps left by crisis,” says FLOODster Marco Schindelmann, soundpedro’s main producer. “Be it SoundWalk’s repurposing vacant storefronts during the 2008 recession or soundpedro’s migrating online during COVID, urban challenges became catalysts, proving that local creativity is most resilient when the traditional landscape falters. Moving forward means embracing uncertainty as a condition of practice, carrying what we’ve learned into terrains not yet mapped and proceeding one sine wave at a time.”
Make the trek to the top of San Pedro on June 6 and you’ll find around 50 installations and performances spread across Angels Gate’s seven acres. For example:
- Thomas Patrick Miley’s Crossing Over incorporates a visual and audio reactive experience combining past and present ideas of death and the afterlife. Participants enter at the River Styx, then cross over to Life Review and Afterlife, where death/afterlife traditions and testimonials — including those related to near-death experiences — await.
- Cassia Streb & Thaddeus Frazier-Reed’s Lunar Array Starfield is an elevated ring of crescent-shaped wooden speakers elevated on slender supports, each of which acts as an independent voice, producing a combination of intermittent and constantly changing synthesized tones and recorded sounds, which drift in and out of alignment, forming temporary groupings that dissolve and reconfigure over time as participants move freely through this immersive field of shifting sound and light.
- Toria Kahni Shi’s Omega Sound is an” interactive musical instrument” that converts body language to sonic expression meant to nurture creativity and wellness.
As always, the only way to really know what the hell I’m talking about is to check it out for yourself, because nothing at soundpedro can be reduced to words. (Check out the embedded video to get a better lay of the land.)
Also taking place during the event is a special tribute to sound artist Jorge Martin (who died last March) featuring performances by several sound/noise artists he collaborated with over the years, including Anna Homler with Jeff Schwartz; Gabie Strong & Renee Petropolous; Sleestak: Anthony Francoso; soundShoppe; and George Sarah & Marco Schindelmann. These performances will take place in the H Building across the duration of the event.
Leading up to June 6 is a pair of happenings. First comes DecaDENSE, a gallery show focusing on “ten years of soundpedro, recollected and recalled with an assortment of soundscapes, videos, and artifacts by a decade of soundpedro artists.” DecaDENSE opens at Angels Gate on May 16 with a reception from 1 to 3 p.m. and closes June 6.
Then there’s a soundpedro2026 preview at Grand Annex Arts Saloon (434 W. 6th St., San Pedro), on Thursday, June 4 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., coinciding with San Pedro’s monthly First Thursday ArtWalk. FLOOD calls it “a chance to encounter works in an intimate, social setting at a venue with its own unique history and character.”
At 10, soundpedro is going strong. But this, too, shall pass; and there’s no time like the present. Hear today….
soundpedro, an evening of ear-oriented multisensory presentations:
Time: 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., June 6
Cost: Free
Details: soundpedro.art
Venue: Angels Gate Cultural Center, 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro