Chantry and Calder: A Soundscape for Chantry Chapel

Love without Sound collaborators, Abi Bliss and David Badger, have created a geolocated soundscape which invites the listener to pause, reflect upon and explore the surroundings of the 14th-Century Chantry Chapel.

Chantry and Calder is a geolocative soundwalk inspired by the 14th-century Chantry Chapel of St Mary on Wakefield’s medieval bridge, the banks of the River Calder and the painter JMW Turner’s 1798 watercolour study of the same spot.

Water Colour by JMW Turner, 1798

Using your smartphone and the free app Echoes, experience your surroundings in a new way as you explore the bridge, admire the chapel and linger beside the riverbank, enjoying a view of Wakefield today that still bears traces of the one painted by Turner more than two centuries ago. Created by Love Without Sound for Index festival 2019

HOW TO ACCESS CHANTRY AND CALDER

You will need a smartphone. Download the free app Echoes from either Google Play or the Apple app store by following this link: https://echoes.xyz/

Make sure your location settings are enabled. Open the app and on the ‘Explore Our Walks’ screen, find Chantry and Calder. If you are in West Yorkshire then the walk should appear in the lists of walks nearby. If you can’t see it then click ‘more’ until it appears. You can open the walk anywhere but can only listen to it when you’re in the vicinity of the Chantry Chapel on the bridge. You can see which areas trigger the sounds by the shapes appearing on the map within the Echoes app.

You can either download or stream the piece while walking around. You will need around 100-200MB of data allowance depending on how long you spend there. We recommend that you start by approaching the bridge along Calder Vale Road from the direction of the city centre, in which case you should find that you hear the first sounds after passing the post boxes.

Move around the area however you like: there are sounds to hear on the bridge and on the riverbank once you have crossed the bridge. At the water’s edge, climb the steps onto the concrete platform and see if you can spot Wakefield Cathedral’s spire in the distance.

The walk is best experienced through earphones, so be aware of traffic and other pedestrians. You will find that sounds get louder or quieter as you move around, but use your phone’s volume control to adjust them to a comfortable level. If you have trouble running the app, then try closing it and restarting your phone.