Update on Aiguamolls, RSPB Webinar and our first permanent installation in a city.
May 2023, lots of work to reach a bigger audience.
End of April we crossed the Iberian Peninsula from EVOA, Lisbon to Aiguamolls de l'Empordà in North Catalonia, and we spent our time in May slightly different from the usual.
We have been already in Aiguamolls de l’Emporda last year during our test phase and things have been amazing. We have met wonderful people, seen so many incredible birds, and done one of the installations which have been pivotal to better understanding the Sounding Wild mission.Â
This time things were different but we had to spend the first two weeks working on another project, the first steps for us to share our work with a bigger audience. We had to spend a lot of time in front of our laptops,
RSPB webinar.
RSPB has invited us to present our work at their webinar dedicated to the "International Dawn Chorus Day".
It was live in early May, and below you can see the video we have created for the occasion, thank you Jamie, Ben, Tash and the Nature’s Notes team to invite us and produce the webinar. It was a great opportunity to share what we are doing, talking to camera and showing which birds we have met so far on the expedition.
"Wings Across Continents" Permanent Installation in Bristol.
While Ario was editing the video for the RSPB back in Aiguamolls, Axel flew to Bristol to set up one of the coolest, most crucial works powered by Sounding Wild yet.
Our mission is to take immersive, jaw-dropping experiences to people wherever we go, showing the local migratory wildlife to local people and tourists in an immersive and cutting-edge way, which at the same time is also contemporary, using Virtual Reality and 10 loudspeakers. This limits us a bit in terms of audience reach, yes we work closely with people, and we can really tailor the experience to the location where we’ve been and where we’re working, but at the same time, we reach an average audience of 65 people a day with two Virtual Reality headsets.
This average audience is a massive number already for a virtual reality installation, and we can’t be more proud than this.
We have been told many times that we are doing great with numbers already, but we want more. We want to connect also with thousands of people giving them a hint of what bird migration is and how incredible it is.
We believe in healthy nature, and we must share its voice with as many people as possible.
"Wings Across Continents" Permanent Installation is our 6-month audio/visual experience at Sparks in Bristol, a continuous experience running daily at the entrance of this newly-revamped shopping mall.
Sparks is a hub for art and sustainability created by the Global Goals Centre bringing a space to creators and artists promoting art and sustainable living by taking over an old M&S building, making it a space open for people to express themselves, focusing on the local community.
The Nature Area is located at the Broadmead entrance, where we installed a 9.1 loudspeaker system playing back all the experiences we are doing during the Wings Across Continents expedition. The team has taken all the Sounding Wild Immersive Experiences done over the past year and edited them for this installation to be able to run all day without breaks. The audience can enjoy the sounds of the migratory birds and learn more about them by watching videos and descriptions on a TV screen installed on one side of the Nature Area.
This is the beginning of something big for us, just over the opening days in mid-May, over 8000 people visited the space making it our biggest audience yet.
As Bristol is the hotspot for wildlife filmmaking, we felt this would be the best place to start getting close to people living in the city.
We hope our experiences have an impact on people, making them appreciate nature close by and far away.
Our time at Aiguamolls.
Unfortunately, this meant we didn’t manage to create the experience we wanted to in Aiguamolls de l’Emporda. Our great friend, collaborator and expert birder Arnau Sargatal has been so kind to let us stay in his flat while working on these projects. Another reason why we stayed at the flat is because another car reversed into Ario's breaking the intercooler, which took two weeks to be fixed.
We had a great time with Arnau though, living life in Girona, we went out birding, had great laughs, tried to spot some rare species, and had amazing typical Catalan food.
We know we have found someone special here, like the many amazing friends we made in other locations following the bird migration. We are grateful to you all, and we hope to see you again very soon.
Next stop... Wadden Sea, North of Germany.
It’s time to drive 22 hours up north, it's going to take a week as we want to stop at various locations on the way.