project bachelor 2021 "The Helsinki Sound Promenade Project"
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): João Luís Matos Lopes
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The Helsinki sound promenade is an artistic research project that intends to explore and analyse and explore the relation between the soundscape, the musicians and the audience on a live performance setting. The live installation preformed by Colectivo Azul uses the urban environment of Helsinki as inspiration and stage for an happening where the audience is invited to walk and listen to the soundscape and musical interventions during the path. Musicians and audience are exposed to the sound and landscape of the city, interpreting its sonic complexity and exploring the dialog between the three parties. The composition is based on a theoretical framework around improvisation over the soundscape of the urban environment as well as exploring the interaction between the audience and the musical performance itself, giving the musicians the possibility to create a sound narrative that could, or not, compliment that soundscape. There will be three moments of composed music created by the author of this research, all directly inspired by three specific spaces. These melodies and harmonic progressions are the reflex of many hours spent doing deep listening and sound walk exercises. While raising the awareness to the soundscape of the city, this performance intends also to reduce the emotional distance between the performers and the audience, trying to dissolve the elitist stereotypes of contemporary performative arts by embedding the performance into the soundscape. On the other hand, the musicians part to this adventure with the idea that the the auditorium is part of the soundscape itself. The result of this research project is a 45 to 50 minutes live performance defined by a chart/script of composed and improvised music, soundscape and video.
