SOUNDWALKS
Experience a soundwalk through your local communities and neighborhoods using your own mobile device and headphones created by interdisciplinary artists Annie Saunders and Andrew Schneider.
The soundwalk team will come to your area to explore, document, and build a custom bespoke experience for your target audiences.
Using binaural sound, composition and site-specific recordings the soundwalk draws together a narrative that immerses participants in both the history and the present-day tales of your location. Guided on a walk and touching on site-specific relevant themes, audience members will experience unique stories and magical moments that only your city can produce.
CURRENT
Project Description
Winner of the 2021 Tribeca Festival Immersive Creative Nonfiction Award and the Tribeca X Award, CURRENT was a site-specific soundwalk though Lower Manhattan accessed via a custom website, using your own mobile device and headphones. CURRENT immersed participants using binaural sound, composition and environmental recordings to draw together a narrative on themes of water, time, construction, destruction, synchronicity, and resilience.
WATCH AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CREATIVE TEAM HERE
Duration: Approximately 60 minutes
Times: The soundwalk will start every half hour beginning at 4pm, with the last showtime at 7pm. Please plan to arrive and join the experience 10 minutes before the soundwalk begins, to ensure entry.
Please note: You will need your own mobile device and headphones for this experience and will use cellular data. Please make sure your phone is charged and both headphones (right and left) are functional.
Location: The 1.5 mile walk begins and ends in Zuccotti Park, Lower Manhattan. Look for signage in the park and scan the QR code to begin.
“The vignettes [presented in CURRENT], timed to play at the golden hour, are casual, edifying and candid, asking us to consider the overlapping landscapes of the cemented-over wetlands, the skyscraper canyons, the storm surges.”
Creative Team
CURRENT was created collaboratively by Annie Saunders (concept, direction, devising, narration); Andrew Schneider (concept development, devising, narration, spatialization, on-location recording and sound design); Jackie! Zhou and One Thousand Birds (sound design, engineering and spatialization); OpenEndedGroup (platform technology creation); Octopus Theatricals (creative producing); and commissioned by Arts Brookfield for One Liberty Plaza and One New York Plaza.
Kormós
Photo: Fanis Pavlopoulos
Project Description
Created site-specifically for Pedion tou Areos, Kormós is a series of time-based site-specific soundwalks though the park - accessed via a custom platform, on your personal mobile device and headphones. The piece immerses participants using binaural environmental recordings, sound design, and original composition. Each walk is based on an individual conversation, recorded in the park, on themes of corporeal experience, physical memory, the sensory world, public and private space, the spirals of recorded time, and the core issues these present and represent.
Creative Team
Photo: Fanis Pavlopoulos
Kormós was created collaboratively by Annie Saunders (concept, direction, devising, narration); Andrew Schneider (concept development, devising, narration, spatialization, on-location recording and sound design); Emma O’Halloran; OpenEndedGroup (platform technology creation); Octopus Theatricals (creative producing); and presented by The Onassis Foundation and Onx Studio.
“For the 'Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data' (2022) exhibition in Pedion tou Areos, the largest public park in Athens, Kormós was the key to artfully and respectfully revealing the often-overlooked layers of history, personal experiences, and communities in the public space. Kormós brought both new visitors and people already familiar with the park into a narrative that triggered emotions, challenged pre-conceptions, and revealed hidden stories.”
— Prodromos Tsiavos,
Head of Digital & Innovation, Onassis Group
Executive Director & Scientific Advisor
“Plásmata: Bodies, Dreams, and Data”, Onassis Stegi
Soundwalk Artists
Annie Saunders
Annie Saunders is a multidisciplinary creator and director of site-specific experiences, and has created award-winning multi-platform projects for major arts institutions including the Public Theater, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Broad Stage and Summerhall, as well as site-specific projects in disused spaces set for demolition and experiential campaigns for multinational brands. Saunders is the founder and artistic director of site-specific performance company Wilderness, a core collaborator and performer with Lars Jan on Holoscenes, and her experimental project The Wreck for Opera Omaha was called ‘ingenious...a persuasive expression of complex female feeling,’ by the Wall Street Journal.
Her installation The Home, a headphone-based experience for one audience member at a time for Santander Bank/Domestic Violence Awareness Month, won the D&AD Yellow Pencil ("Creative Excellence") for Spatial Design and Installation Design, was shortlisted in three other categories, won the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Next Award in the Experiential category, won three awards for Merit in Storytelling, Art Direction and Installations at the One Show, and won two Advertising Producers Association (APA) Ideas Awards in the UK: Best Experiential Project and Best Use of Technology for Good. The work in archives in the Department of Film at MOMA NYC. Her work for HP’s ‘Family Portraits’ campaign won a Shorty award for Diversity and Inclusion and Ogilvy Awards for Tech, Telecommunications and Data Innovation.
She is a member of the inaugural ONX Studio, an invited accelerator for artists working in extended reality to develop significant works for the public realm through NEW INC, the New Museum and the Onassis Foundation, and an alumnus of the Devised Theater Working Group for next-generation performance-makers at the Public Theater.
Her ongoing multi-platform collaboration Up In Arms with Anna Maria Nabirye for physical and digital spaces is in development and touring with ArtsAdmin and Octopus Theatricals. She is currently developing Rest, an XR project with a physical installation as well as a game-built experience for audience-participants at home, with composer Emma O'Halloran, commissioned by and created with Los Angeles-based ensemble Wild Up, with the Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, and with EMPAC at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Andrew Schneider
Andrew Schneider is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer, and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, dance, sound, video, and installation since 2003. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a Wooster Group company member (video/performer) from 2007-2014.
Rooted at the intersection of performance and technology, Schneider’s work asserts that the phenomenological impact of art is no different from any other category of lived experience.
“We live in an increasingly synthetic world of our own making. In the name of more and faster connection, we are animals that have separated ourselves from the actual world around us. The work I make is highly technical, but It is not about the technology. I am more interested in the application of the technology and how it can bring us closer together, shake us from the synthetic, and offer a genuine experience to every audience member’s consciousness, rather than just watching something “over there”. I am interested in how curating meaningful time-based experiences can lead to more meaningful human-to-human interaction. If theater at its core is humans telling stories about ourselves to each other, then I hope it is in the service of getting better at being human. This is why I make the work that I make. This is also how I try to make the work that I make – with an incredible team of value-aligned recurring collaborators who are interested not just in the work of making experience, but in a vigorous interrogation of what power structures exist in the rooms in which we make and how to systemically try to make change in inequitable systems.”
In March of 2020 Andrew premiered the choreographic work »remains« commissioned by the Sasha Waltz & Guests company at Radialsystem in Berlin, Germany.
Andrew’s original performance work in NYC includes NERVOUS/SYSTEM (2018 – BAM Next Wave Festival) AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar Festival, The Public Theater) YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award – The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nom – 3LD); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette), TIDAL (2013 – River to River festival); and WOW+FLUTTER (2010 – The Chocolate Factory Theater) among others.
Andrew has been a recurring collaborator with The TEAM, Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera, Annie Saunders, David Dorfman Dance, Hotel Savant, Fischerspooner, Kelela, and AVAN LAVA. His off-broadway designs include Dolphins and Sharks at the Labyrinth Theater; Small Mouth Sounds at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre; and Roosevelvis at the Vineyard Theatre. Schneider has taught master classes on Technology and Performance at Bowdoin, Carleton, and Connecticut College. He was a 2019 Professor of the Practice and Visiting Fellow in Theatre Arts and Performance Studies through the Brown Arts Initiative at Brown University, as well as an adjunct professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. Andrew holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.
He is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2020).
Emma O’Halloran (Kormós)
Emma O’Halloran is an Irish composer and vocalist. Freely intertwining acoustic and electronic music, O’Halloran has written for folk musicians, chamber ensembles, turntables, laptop orchestra, symphony orchestra, film, and theater. Her work has been described as “intensely beautiful” (‘Washington Post’) and “unencumbered, authentic, and joyful” (‘I Care If You Listen’), and has won numerous competitions, including National Sawdust’s inaugural Hildegard competition and the Next Generation award from Beth Morrison Projects. O’Halloran’s music aims to capture the human experience, exploring complex emotions felt in specific moments in time. This approach has found a wide audience: her work has been featured at the international Classical NEXT conference in Rotterdam, the Prototype Festival in NEW YORK, Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival, and MATA Festival. Additionally, her music has been performed by Crash Ensemble, Contemporaneous, Khemia Ensemble, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet, the Refugee Orchestra Project, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.
Jackie! Zhou (Current)
Jackie! Zhou likes to tell stories and make sounds. There are no limits in the world of sound design--anything is possible. She celebrates friendship and filmmaking. When she is not on the Foley stage or in the mix room, you can find her listening to podcasts, rollerblading, or pretending to be a cloud. She is a sound designer based in Los Angeles, CA.
She received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Netflix’s Godless (dir. Scott Frank) and has been nominated four times for a MPSE Golden Reel Award. Her sound design credits include: Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer, HBO’s United Skates, Thunder Road, Warcraft: The Beginning, and Snowden. Her live performance sound design has been heard at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, The Public Theater, and Summerhall. Her favorite sounds are water drops hitting a hot stove, snow crunching footsteps, and a juicy overheard conversation. In addition to the post-sound world, she is currently exploring directing and radio documentaries. Jackie! loves all shapes of storytelling and is keen on blurring the lines between different formats and disciplines.
She believes good humans make great storytellers.
One Thousand Birds (Current)
One Thousand Birds is a design studio for audio specializing in sound design + mixing, creating immersive sonic landscapes for events and installations, commercials, films, radio, podcasts, and AR/VR/XR. We cultivate energetic creative spirit, hiring rising talent and fostering fresh sound design perspectives. OTB's sounds have been heard on the loudspeakers at the Super Bowl and in VR headsets at the Whitney Museum.
OpenEndedGroup (Current & Kormós)
OpenEndedGroup comprises two digital artists: Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser.
Their pioneering approach to digital art frequently combines three signature elements: non-photorealistic 3D rendering; the incorporation of body movement by motion-capture and other means; and the autonomy of artworks directed or assisted by artificial intelligence.
In recent years, The Museum of Modern Art has acquired eight of their pioneering 3D films for its permanent collection; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Musuem has commissioned from them two 3D films and a multi-screen 3D installation; the New York, the Berlin, and the Rome Film Festivals have premiered new films of theirs; and the University of Chicago, IRCAM, Stanford, and the University of Michigan have hosted them in extended artist-in-residencies.