Voices of the Earth Sound Walks

SRT proudly announces a new interactive project, that takes you out into the natural world, guided and enriched by audio passages drawn from our Voices of the Earth project.

The five sound walks represent a cross section of the Bay Area’s natural beauty. The collection offers participants varied landscapes and views from which to experience audio from SRT’s Voices of the Earth production. The walks include city, county, regional, state, and nationally managed areas, differing in length and difficulty (one route is ADA accessible). The flora and fauna of each walk changes throughout the seasons, inviting returns visits.

Free to enjoy, the five sound walks are set within Pearson–Arastradero Preserve, Wunderlich Park, Coyote Hills Regional Park, Mount Diablo State Park, and Mori Point. Parking is free at each walk. Coyote Hills Regional Park has an entrance fee; however, you don’t have pay if you park just outside the Park to access the walk.

The selected quotations from  the Voices of the Earth production reflect and respond to the different locations, mapped via the Echoes app, which you can download on your smartphone. We encourage you to stop and listen to the audio selections at the specified locations, building a narrative that enriches your experience of the surrounding landscape and your relationship to it.

Please click here (or scroll further down this page) for information on how to download (free!) the Echoes app on your smartphone, and for detailed instructions on how to access the Sound Walks audio. It may look intimidating, but you can do it all in a couple of minutes. It’s a bit like the audio guides at museums, but instead of entering a number linked to a painting, the Echoes app will “locate you” as you take a Sound Walk in one of our five areas. When you arrive at a specified location, the Echo “app” will allow you to hear audio tracks carefully selected to fit that location.

Supported by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, SRT’s Sound Walks is curated by Danielle Adair, with Dan Holland as Audio Editor and Composer. Enjoy any or all of these walks, enriched by SRT’s Voices of the Earth.

VOICES OF THE EARTH: TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS

READ BEFORE LISTENING

Voices of the Earth: From Sophocles to Rachel Carson and Beyond is a geo-located audio experienced available through the Echoes app. Listeners will be guided to various locations around one of the listed parks and will gain access to snippets of audio as they walk. Each snippet includes carefully curated content for your listening pleasure, so please pause to listen while you take in the nearby scenery.

In order to experience Voices of the Earth, you must first download the Echoes app through the App Store (for iPhone users) and Google Play (for other users). Prior to venturing out on your Voices of the Earth experience, please remember to download the Echoes app (shown below on the App Store) and ensure it works on your phone. You do not need to create an Echoes account to access Voices of the Earth.

Voices of the Earth is currently available at five separate locations around the CA Bay Area, each with a unique tailored experience. These five locations are:

• Coyote Hill Regional Park

• Mori Point

• Mount Diablo State Park

• Pearson-Arastradero Preserve

• Wunderlich Park

To access the program (called a “Walk” on the Echoes platform), open the Echoes app when you have arrived at the park of your choice and browse the homepage for Voices of the Earth among the “Near you” and “Featured walks” lists.

If, as in the image above, Voices of the Earth does not immediately appear on the homepage, select the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and type in “Voices of the earth” into the search bar.

When you have found Voices of the Earth among the listed Walks, select it. Please bear in mind that there are five Voices of the Earth walks listed, labeled by and unique to each park. In the image above, Voices of the Earth – Coyote Hills Regional Park appears as the nearest Voices of the Earth Walk.

After opening the Voices of the Earth Walk on the Echoes app, you will be greeted with a map of all the listening locations (referred to as “Echoes” on the Echoes platform) for this Walk. You may see, as in the above image, a text box appears at the top of your screen reading “Outside of all Echoes, Keep walking.” This simply means that you have not yet arrived at one of the listening locations. When you are in close proximity to an Echo, a message will appear on your screen indicating that you have access to an Echo. Take a moment to stop where you are, take in the scenery, and hit Play on the Echoes app to listen to the curated content for that location. When the audio snippet has finished playing, please continue your walk in the direction of the next Echo. Enjoy!