Viper Marketing

Location Aware Music

- News article posted on Monday 12 Jul 2010 at 09:29 by Jim Hardcastle

Students from Churchill Community School brought their friends and families to listen to the music written by them and inspired by Dolebury Warren hill. This is no ordinary listening experience. The visitors are given headphones and handheld computers that enable them to listen to the piece of music in the exact spot on the hill that the student wrote it about. Viper is helping to promote this innovative project via social media and a targeted e-newsletter.

Peter Milner, organiser of the Music on Mendip project said ‘Dolebury Warren is a dramatic place – a Mendip hilltop with stunning views. It’s amazing to see people wearing the headphones, dotted across the hilltop, searching for the music. They walk slowly then stop for a while, then walk on again.

Each of them is finding and hearing music composed for different places on the hilltop, and which can only be heard in those places thanks to new GPS driven technology. They stop to listen and as each piece is completed they move on to find more music.’

The music has been composed by Churchill School GCSE music students. They have been working with renowned sound artist and composer Duncan Speakman. Duncan has pioneered the use of location aware technology in his work and now his expertise has helped create an amazing experience – ‘Music on Mendip’. Duncan is also creating his own composition for the hilltop.

The music will be available as downloads from the Local Journeys website. There will be mp3 versions, that you can listen to on an iPod or other mp3 player, and location aware versions that you will be able to play on some new generation mobile phones. This exciting project has been financially supported by Find Your Talent – a scheme run by North Somerset Council to encourage creativity and cultural activity in schools – and Mendip AONB Sustainability Fund which supports a range of projects to engage the broad community with the Mendip landscape in ways that are sustainable in the long term.

- Posted on Monday 12 Jul 2010 at 09:29 by Jim Hardcastle