Song For Greta. 13mins. Stereo mix.

Umbrella Collective held their latest event at the Soundscape Park (Bridge Community Garden) in East Belfast on Saturday 22nd June.

The artists (including myself) responded to the theme of climate change and played compositions throughout the 9 speakers hidden in the park. Audience members could wander around and listen to the spatialised compositions during the 90 minute event. 

My composition was entitled Song For Greta, engaging with the speeches of Greta Thunburg, wondering what the politicians are hearing when she speaks.

She asks for immediate action, politicians applaud and agree, but with no immediate action seeming to happen.

She tells MEPs that they call emergency summits for Brexit and none for climate change when that is really far more important to the survival of us all.

They applaud again and again yet what action is being taken.

For the composition, I took Greta’s speeches and made them into music devoid of meaning, underpinned with an emotive response on piano. The work was designed to be listened to across the 9 speakers in the park. The sound file above is the 9 channels composition mixed down into a stereo file.


Event promo:

Sound art collective UMBRELLA will showcase their projects, works in progress and small experiments in the setting of Soundscape Park Project. Soundscape Park Project is a permanent interactive sound installation with discreetly hidden loudspeakers mingled among flowerbeds. It is located in Bridge Community Garden, East Belfast, aiming to bring something different to Belfast City. 

UMBRELLA artists have created site-specific pieces, demonstrating various possibilities that can arise from utilising the setup of Soundscape Park. At the same time, this event will address the topic of climate change through the presented pieces. Sonic arts is an art form which has long been concerned with the preservation of environment, and UMBRELLA will take up on the urgency of this contemporaneous matter. It will be also an occasion to investigate the role and/or the non-role of arts and artists in making a social impact.