This ambitious project started in mid 2016 and came to fruition in the late summer and early autumn of 2017. It encompassed two separate and interlinking pieces of work. The first was an audio guide, commissioned by Sensing Culture and Sussex Past in partnership with RNIB and created in collaboration with Josh Kopecek (founder of audio geo-location app Echoes); using multiple narrative voices and binaural field recordings to evoke the history of the castle and its associated museum collection. The guide is primarily aimed at blind and partially sighted visitors to enable them to find their way around the site unaided, and features a full audio description of directions in addition to the historic content. We very much wanted to push the boundaries of the form of the audio guide, whilst serving our target audience i.e. everything we produced had to be fully accessible. The guide also had to function well for a general audience and the thousands of foreign visitors to the castle each year. I am very proud of what we achieved and the app is now live on the iOS and Android app stores.

You can download the IOS app here and the Android app here…

The second part of the project was the creation of a permanent sound installation entitled ‘Singing the Castle to life’, a four channel sonic love poem  to the South Downs. Again, the work had a practical purpose, to offer an experience in sound of the stunning panoramic views from the top of the South Tower (the highest point on the site) for those unable to climb the steep and many stairs. The installation utilises historic quotation, original text, binaural field recordings and ambient musical textures to create a multi-layered, multi speaker evocation of landscape that focuses on the land itself and some of the famous built landmarks that sit within it. The work can be found in the Gun Garden on the ground level of the castle site.

The project was supported by Heritage Lottery funding