SoundLife London
is a unique sound composition created especially for Leicester Square Gardens by sound artist and musician Martyn Ware which reveals the 3-dimensional sound world that surrounds us at all times in the most fascinating and diverse city in the world.
SoundLife London plays continuously each day between 9am and 7pm. Sonic events occur on the hour, quarter, half, and three-quarter hours.
SoundLife London is an hour long, looped ‘soundscape’ mixing found and collected sounds with an ambient musical composition. It aims to augment the everyday background noise of Leicester Square with subtle melody and musical refrains that appear to float on the wind and distant sounds from the city moving ghostlike around the park.
A variety of sonic themes are introduced at ten minute intervals each hour throughout the day: 00 – Music | 10 – History | 20 – Locations | 30 – Theatre & Film | 40 – Ethnicity | 50 – Wildlife
Making SoundLife London
The London Borough of Westminster’s unique geography and demographic – from city centre to the river, street market to shopping mall, council estate to leafy suburb – provides a unique opportunity for the creators of SoundLife London to work with local residents to include sounds that reflect the makeup of their communities and
improve awareness of Westminster’s diverse cultures.
Audio clips for SoundLife London have been collected through an outreach and education programme in which a team from Future Of Sound, including musician Lewis Sykes and storyteller Natacha Bryan, ran a series of workshops with participating groups exploring the creative and practical challenges involved in collecting sounds which could be imagined as a ‘sonic postcard’ of their community and integrated into the 3D sound composition.
Participating Westminster Organisations
Barrow Hill Junior School, St John’s Wood
College Park School, Westbourne Green
Digital Media Unit, Bayswater
Ebury Bridge Youth Centre, Victoria
Open Age Hub, Victoria
Queens Park Play Group, Queens Park
St Marylebone C of E School, Marylebone
More information about SoundLife London can be found in Westminster Reference Library
Please visit the exhibit in the ibrary, on St Martin’s Street at the south side of Leicester Square, for a full background to the project, and to leave your comments.
SoundLife London has been made possible by
City of Westminster, Arts Council England, Illustrious, Arts Co, Future Of Sound, Audio Boo, Starbucks Coffee, AIG.
