“An Umbrella for 2” is a sound walk written contextually in response to a place and each time renewed in relation to the spaces and populations heard & encountered. A pair of listeners are invited to discover points of view and points of listening all along their journey through the public space. A sound umbrella equipped with an MP3 player and two headphones is provided at the start of the walk. After being prepared for hearing by our special “listening-chamber” and being given details to make them technically autonomous, listeners are invited to discover this sound- scape promenade.

This way of listening superimposed onto the real ambient sound as well as accentuating our listening or “augmenting reality”, also gives us new ways of looking at reality. In effect, here, listening permits us to re-orientate our vision, offer it new horizons, focus on a detail, or further still access the invisible, or even another place. Here, the relations established by diverse perceptions and listening create a new relationship with reality. This relationship oscillates between losing our boundaries (disorientation, unbalance, changes of perception) and accessing a new reality (dream state, illusions, mirages, hallucinations), or on the contrary, a concrete situation for the listeners in the heart of reality. The awareness of this paradoxical situation tends to re-locate the listener to question his place and his relationship to the public space: here and now.

This soundtrack will also subtly blend with the real ambient sound, native to the place. Indeed the headphones are open and always let the sound of the “living” space flow through. Having the effect that the ‘real sound’ of the place is expressed, unique, and at the heart of the proposition. This blend of sounds will create, in the heart of the public space, acoustic changes of perspective, rubbing realities, musical vanishing points, highlighting the heard reality.