Bradford ‘SoundPool’ is a Sound Art Diffusion System that surrounds the Mirror Pool, the new city park being built bang in the centre of Bradford UK, that opens in 2012. At each of ten points around the 80m fountain pool, speakers are discreetly installed below the ground, and high up in the sky on 15m posts. I will be creating a 24hr programme of sound pieces to be played on the system.

Bradford's new urban park is at the centre of the community, and should celebrate its diversity and act as a positive space for the population to interact and play and relax.  My musical response to this is to create a calm background soundscape using elemental nature sounds and spatial atmospheres to infiltrate and augment the artificial landscape. The daily cycle of the park, the filling and draining of the pool, the desire to work with and involve the community, and bringing nature into the park are all key components of the project.  

At dawn and dusk each day, as the pool fills and drains, a spatial soft drone rises from the ground via the speakers positioned in ten 'Sound Wells' covered by unobtrusive grates, or man hole covers etc. Nature is a key theme arising from the fact that the migration and immigration of animals and humans has been occurring for over 150milliion years. One place migrants cross paths, is gathering around a watering hole. I see bird song as a sound icon of migration, and it is also beautiful and unobtrusive. So I propose to use the speaker posts to play back a collage of water birds from around the world during the day.  These will be discreet and not playing all the time. A very simple movement trigger will briefly turn on each post as people pass by underneath.  

Other components include the ‘you have the world at your feet’ community project run by me to enlist the participation of a wide range of Bradford Residents to collect sounds from around the world related to their families and urban spaces. These recordings of urban spaces and languages will play quietly from the ground speakers at night… voices from the earth below your feet…. global connections. The ‘Bradford Blowhole’ is a piece written for uplifting brass band drones to coincide with the daily Bradford Blast fountain feature. Finally the ‘Twin Shores’ soundscape takes recordings of the seashore in the twin town of Galway to be played back slowly from the underground speaker system