BRISTOL CITY CENTRE-LOCATED VERSION (go there to experience it)

SEE COLSTON’S LAST JOURNEY FOR ALL INFORMATION AND DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS

A sea of interactive audio (a soundscape) is layered over the whole of Bristol city centre from the Colston plinth to where Colston’s statue was thrown into the Floating Harbour at Pero’s Bridge. You access the soundscape via an audio app on your smartphone (Launch October 2023).

Afloat or moored upon this ever-moving sea of sound along this, the historic Broad Quay, are 9 audio ghost slave ships. These are the ghosts of the real ships which actually sailed from HERE to the coast of West Africa and then on to the West Indies  in the 18th and 17th centuries. trafficking enslaved Africans

As you wander around within ‘the sea’, fragments of facts, various statements, re-created dialogues, names of captains, slave trade statistics, lost voices, voices of resistance etc etc arise out of its depths and spiral in to you.

Each one of these ghost ships represents a particular facet of the trafficking of enslaved Africans. When you encounter one, you can ‘board’ it and listen to what it has to say

PORTABLE VERSION – playable anywhere in the world – UNDER DEVELOPMENT

A sea of interactive audio (the purple soundpool) can be transferred by YOU to a statue or site anywhere in the world associated with the trafficking of enslaved Africans (launch October 2023)

Just download and open the app and tell it ‘I’d like to experience the soundscape HERE’. It opens a circular sea of sound (see pic) all around you: fragments of facts, statements, re-created dialogues, names of captains, slave trade statistics, lost voices, voices of resistance etc etc arise out of the depths of the audio-sea and spiral in to you.

Tossing around, circling you, the listener, on this interactive ocean of sound are 9 audio ghost ships. You can move towards any one of them and hear what it has to say, then follow it as it circles, or you can stay still and the ships will sail on and past you

THIS IS A SOUNDART PROJECT, NOT AN HISTORICAL GUIDE

Arts Council England, Bristol Ideas and University of the West of England Regional History Centre-supported work of soundart by Ralph Hoyte with Phill Phelps. LAUNCHING OCTOBER 17TH-19TH as part of the Bristol Festival of the Future City.

DEDICATED WEBSITE HERE: COLSTON’S LAST JOURNEY