
Soundwalk
- By Nina Sventitsky
It’s Spring, and while the rest of the country is battling those last weeks of Winter, we’re out and about. Now we can also be part of a new audible public art installation in Griffith Park. Ellen Reid Soundwalk is a free experience: get yourself to the park, download the free app and move. Reid is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and artist, using sound as well as music in her works. Soundwalk depends on your phone’s GPS and your movements to create a personal sound experience. The blending of art, nature and technology is brilliant because your experience is unique to you and to your pace. Through your headphones or earbuds, your path triggers ‘musical cells’ of sounds and a score recorded by various artists, including the world-famous Kronos Quartet.
So far, Soundwalk is available in LA and New York, with other locations opening up through 2021 – mainly in public parks and music festival venues and associate with the local orchestras like the NY Philharmonic in Central Park, and Wolf Trap in Virginia. Each city’s Soundwalk is composed differently, with new scores and sounds. The LA installation location of Griffith Park was selected by Reid and CAP UCLA for its iconic status as a hub of nature for the city and runs through 2023.
The free app is available for iOS and Android. Click here.