From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Lahore Frequency Walk—An Audio-Locative Pilgrimage (2022–present)
This article is about a walking experience in Lahore. For related audio-drama and sound works, see Radio drama adaptations.
Participation in the walk does not require adherence to any particular faith tradition; see Radio Theology for the devotional framework some participants use.
The Lahore Frequency Walk is a self-guided or group walking experience through Old City Lahore that uses GPS-triggered audio fragments, radio broadcasts, and pre-recorded passages to reposition the radio igloo motif across the city's actual telecommunications and broadcast landscape. Created in 2022 by sound artist and devotee ██ , it functions as both tourist experience and religious ceremony for followers of Radio Theology, a minor sectarian movement within Synoptic Theology of the Cycle.
Participants download a mobile app or receive a portable audio player (operating on FM frequencies and digital audio) and walk approximately 8 kilometres through the Badshahi Mosque district, Heera Mandi's hidden courtyards, and former telecommunications hubs. At each of twelve GPS-marked stations—located at historical radio transmission sites, telephone exchanges, and rooftop antennae—the audio player triggers pre-recorded fragments: passages from *Beach Surgery* in Urdu and English, interviews with local frequency enthusiasts, and Sufi qawwali interpretations of the Kármán resonance motif.
Participants complete the walk in silence. The experience is designed to "tune the walker to the city's own broadcast layer"—to hear Lahore's actual frequencies beneath its visible geography. Some walkers report temporal disorientation and vivid sensory memory; others describe profound meditative clarity.
The walk was initially restricted by municipal authorities and remains controversial among some Islamic scholars, who raised concerns about the Sufi musical content. Organizers emphasize the walk's relationship to the novel's own cross-cultural and inter-faith openness.