Swallow Walk is an audio-guided experience of Edwardes Lake in Reservoir, inspired by the lake’s surrounding environment and its migratory birds including the Welcome Swallows that flit over the lake, especially at springtime.
Wearing headphones connected to your personal device, enter a contemplative space as you are lead by a multilayered and poetic sound track featuring the sublime vocals of Ria Soemardjo and text by Sandra Fiona Long.
'The beauty of Swallow Walk is many fold. It creates inner peace and reconnects us with our bodies as well as connecting us with the Lake - it's habitats and it's inhabitants. It is nature as beauty sitting enmeshed with beauty manmade resulting in beauty as experience. It is ephemeral and real at the same time. My great hope for Swallow Walk is that it becomes a permanent community resource. The work is timeless and can become part of a permanent community experience. '
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Review by Samsara Dunston  2020 -   read more  >

PROJECT BACKGROUND

Ria: Music and sounds for accompanying the Swallow Walk journey were all recorded during isolation, in my home studio. The audio features vocal layers, exploring interlocking parts inspired by frogs (also a feature of many styles of Javanese and Balinese  music), and percussion.
Multi-instrumentalist Ron Reeves, kindly loaned his beautiful sonorous Sundanese gongs and added some percussion  - the frog like bamboo  tubes also from West Java - keprak.  
​A huge learning curve - recording and editing myself, with long term collaborator - tech/musician wiz Pin Rada assisting  patiently from Alice Springs. 
Sandra: I usually visit Edwardes lake daily, and during Covid 19 restrictions I have spent even more time there, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day walking to the lake to have a break from my computer at home. I feel very thankful to have a place full of nature close by as I observe the changes which occur with the seasons. Different birds appearing, plants flowering, mushrooms sprouting, frogs singing, broods of baby birds on the land and water. I have seen many other people also enjoying the place during this time, which highlights to me the importance of public spaces and wildlife corridors for human and non-human creatures. I wrote the text for Swallow Walk this year, inspired by watching the swallows in flight and by the way they use the wind currents to manoeuvre themselves so swiftly. When Ria suggested the text would work well as part of an audio lead tour at the lake I felt very excited, as it seemed the perfect way for people to get outdoors, experience the lake and during Covid19 restrictions experience a kind of performance which they can do in their own time.  
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