Earth & Sky - immersive adventure in Brontë country
by Echoes Labs
location: Penistone Hill Country Park, Haworth, West Yorkshire, UK
project type: bespoke mobile app
client: Opera North, Bradford City of Culture
About
Earth & Sky is an immersive soundwalk that puts you in the heart of Brontë country! Step onto the wild uplands above Haworth and let a symphony of GPS-triggered soundscapes surround you as you explore the landscape that inspired literary legends. Earth & Sky | Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
Earth & Sky uses GPS-triggering technology to transport you into an audio world that responds to every step you take across the rugged moorland. Each location along the 2.6-mile trail unleashes specially crafted music, field recordings, and poetry Earth & Sky | Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture - from contemporary electronic compositions to the Orchestra of Opera North performing Frederick Delius. This is not your typical countryside stroll.
Follow a butterfly's journey through muttered voices and choral harmonies, discover industrial echoes in quarry stones, and hear the dawn chorus blend with brass drones as you traverse terrain soaring 1,000 feet above sea level. Earth & Sky | Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture Created by contemporary women composers Caterina Barbieri, Nyokabi Kariũki, and Gwen Siôn, alongside sound artist Sarah Keirle-Dos Santos and Bradford-born poet Nabeelah Hafeez Earth & Sky | Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, each piece is uniquely crafted for its exact location on Penistone Hill.
Created by Opera North for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, this FREE project reimagines how we experience both classical music and the natural world.
➔ Opera North website
➔ Yorkshire Post piece on Earth & Sky
Our role
Opera North tasked us with creating their Earth & Sky app, a sophisticated GPS-triggered soundwalk experience across the wild uplands of Brontë country. The app presented unique challenges in both design and technical execution. Each location along the 2.6-mile trail features precisely crafted audio compositions that activate based on the walker's exact position, with contemporary electronic works, orchestral pieces, field recordings, and poetry all seamlessly woven together.
The technical complexity involved synchronizing works by three contemporary composers, Opera North's full orchestra and chorus, field recordings, and spoken word poetry - all while maintaining seamless playback across challenging moorland terrain.
The result is a groundbreaking fusion of classical music, contemporary composition, and location-based technology that transforms a countryside walk into an immersive artistic journey. Walkers become active participants in the experience, following butterfly calls through Nyokabi Kariũki's soundscape, discovering industrial echoes in Gwen Siôn's quarry-inspired piece, and experiencing Caterina Barbieri's trance-like electronics among the tumbling rocks.
Opera North leveraged the app's capabilities to create something unprecedented - a site-specific opera that exists only in the landscape itself, pushing the boundaries of what's possible when classical music meets cutting-edge audio technology. The results speak for themselves – a truly innovative audio experience crossing boundaries in digital art and outdoor exploration.
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