A new GPS-enabled free audio app to listen to while walking or running in St Stephen’s Green became available to download on Tuesday. The Dublin city centre park joined public parks across the world to have a Soundwalk experience created by American composer Ellen Reid specifically for this green urban space cherished by locals and visitors alike.
Reid, who is a Pulitzer prize-winning composer and sound designer, began to compose her soundscape when in the National Concert Hall (NCH) in Dublin in January 2023 to hear the National Symphony Orchestra perform one of her compositions.
“I spent a week exploring the park and even spent some time there after it closed. It has a unique vibe. You can feel how much people love it,” she tells The Irish Times from her home in Los Angeles.
For the St Stephen’s Green Soundwalk audio app, she mixed her pre-recorded compositions performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet and other musicians.
“The app responds to where you are and the soundscapes change by what’s around you. It’s a collaboration with the environment. I hope people are curious to come back and discover it in a different season or after a specific life experience,” Reid says.
The NCH partnered with the Office of Public Works in this new venture. Chief executive of the National Concert Hall, Robert Read, says this is the first of many new projects aimed at communities who don’t necessarily have a connection with the National Concert Hall.
“Our aim is to engage and inspire the public with music,” Read says. Visitors to St Stephen’s Green can download the app using the QR code on information boards scattered around the park.
Read also describes the project as “an exciting opportunity to present new work in innovative ways”. “We plan to use different unconventional spaces across the city and the country in non-traditional ways to reach wider audiences,” he says.
On the information panels in St Stephen’s Green, the Soundwalk is described as a “work of public art using music to illuminate the natural environment”. Trialling the technology on Tuesday, this writer found listening to the sounds magnified the experience of people-watching and admiring the spring flowers and blossoming cherry, magnolia and chestnut trees in St Stephen’s Green on a sunny afternoon in late April. The app loses its connection as you leave the park.
Ellen Reid Soundwalks already exist for Central Park in New York, the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and Regent’s Park in London. Reid says people have told her that listening to it inspires them to explore parts of the park they haven’t been to before. “People say they spend longer in the park than they would usually and that it opens up another way to experience a familiar landscape,” she says.
Niall Gaffney, the chief executive of IPUT Real Estate which supported the project financially, says their ambition is to “make Dublin a more attractive and vibrant place to live and work in”. The Soundwalk app adds to their Dublin city centre portfolio of cultural projects, which include developing Earlsfort gardens as a pocket park and the canvas screen in Wilton Park showing digital art and music.
