About
Sound Sky is a collaborative project between artists, organisations, and the Christchurch public.
Concept
Sound Sky is a location-sensitive audio-visual artwork for Christchurch constructed from and inspired by spoken and recorded contributions from residents. Using smartphones (iOS and Android), the work allows people to listen to and share memories of the past, create playfulness in the present, and plant visions for the future. In this way the audioscape is growing as the city grows and emerges over many years following the tragic events of 2010-2011.
Take a wander and listen to the audioscape via the app while in central Christchurch. Pick a place in the city that has a memory or story for you and try recording something. Questions in the iOS app allow you to share personal stories or memories, make recordings of what is going on around you, or add visions and moments from possible futures. Audio recordings created are geo-located and can only be heard where they were recorded.
As the audioscape grows over time, listener/participants will be able to experience a continuous weaving together of location-specific voice content and musical composition, all related to the city, and its people in this transitional time.
But it will take your collaboration and input. Local visual or performance artists, sound artists, and musicians are invited to play in this space and ‘adopt’ areas of the city or aspects of the audioscape. We also welcome all kinds of local knowledges and histories.
By developing an infrastructure within which residents can create something together in public spaces around the city in an evolving way, we hope to help celebrate Christchurch, to emphasize the creativity and knowledges of its people and places, and by recording the past as a way of creatively moving into the future.
Partners & Collaborators
Initiators
The beginnings
This project was initiated after a suggestion and conversation with developer Phill Coxon in Christchurch, and initial conversations that followed with CEISMIC staff at the ADA Mesh Cities symposium in Christchurch in 2013. Sound Sky is built on the open source Roundware system that Halsey has developed to create geo-located audioscapes. With this work, this has been expanding to include images and texts that can be shared about a recording.
Artist/designer Trudy Lane and sound artist/musician/developer Halsey Burgund have been the main coordinators of the project to-date with significant input from Michael Reynolds of A Brave New City, and increasing numbers of local artists interested for their audio works to join the environment. We welcome others to join in. We have a whole city to play in!
Content & Community Partners
Grounding partnerships
CEISMIC at the University of Canterbury is building a comprehensive digital archive of video, audio, documents and images related to the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. Created to give the people of Christchurch and New Zealand a single place to create, remember and research their heritage, the focus has now also turned to the struggles, chaos and creativity that has followed the earthquakes. Recordings made in Sound Sky are to become part of the CEISMIC archive.
Cantabrian Society for Sonic Artists (CSSA) is a sonic arts group based in the city of Christchurch, who also run The Auricle Sonic Arts Gallery. Established as a hub for sonic arts in the region, CSSA grew out of The Borderline Ballroom, an experimental music collective that has been curating “music from the margins” events in Christchurch since 2007. Sound Sky has partnered with CSSA and The Auricle to create an exhibition installation of the work during the FESTA 2014 event, and they are hosting a kiosk for Sound Sky at the Gallery so that those without iOS devices can participate.
Gap Filler is a renowned creative group which aims to temporarily activate vacant sites within Christchurch with creative projects, to make for a more interesting, dynamic and vibrant city. Sound Sky has partnered with Gap Filler to restage The Transitional City Audio Tour that they created, into a geo-located environment.
Creative Collaborations
Supporting local efforts
A Brave New City has a focus on ensuring that the human experience of the city, and the wellbeing of the populace has a prominence in the redevelopment plans for the city. To do this, Michael Reynolds is working to re-engage people with the futures of the city.
Together we have been developing a game for encouraging a creative engagement with imagining and recording audio snippets relating to possible futures for Christchurch which go into the Sound Sky environment. Come and join in as part of the FESTA programme in October 2014.
We would also like to thank the artists involved in the Audacious Festival of 2014 and the Cantabrian Society of Sonic Artists and other local artists working with audio, whose recordings have been included in the audioscape where possible. In particular we would like to thank the artists involved with A Folded Path, a work which forms some pathways within the Sound Sky environment.
Other artists we wish to thank include Olivia Webb for the inclusion of her Voices Project and Simon Pope for the inclusion of recordings made in Christchurch during his Netwalking tour.
Funding Partners
Making this project possible…
Creative New Zealand (CNZ) – We and our local partners are hugely grateful for the financial support for the development of this project received from Creative New Zealand, the national arts development agency — developing, investing in and advocating for the arts in New Zealand Aotearoa.
Transitional City Project Fund – the wonderful team at the Christchurch City Council working with the Transitional City Project Fund have been supporting all kinds of creative work going on in the city as part of a revitalisation of the central city and other areas. Sound Sky has been gratefully supported by this fund and are like the project, committed for the long-term to encouraging a creative and enjoyable city.
Aotearoa Digital Arts (ADA) – The ADA network is New Zealand’s national research network for critical discussion and presentation of digital and media arts. The organisation is supporting a series of public workshops on Sound Sky during 2014 as the ADA Mesh Cities Artist Tour 2014 programme.
You!
Come join us.
Be a part of Sound Sky. We welcome new collaborators and want people to use the environment in creative ways for what is happening in Christchurch. So please feel free to say hello if you have any questions.