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SWS23 2023

Colston’s Last Journey

Bristol, UK
Free
Twi/Akan (in part)

cascade

Collection · 1 items

Floating

Collection · 7 items

Interactive

Collection · 50 items

Regions

Bristol

City · 27 items

Related

video

Afloat on the sea of sound there are seven ghost slave ships

Located audio sound artists Ralph Hoyte and Phill Phelps launch their latest located audio sound art work “Colston’s Last Journey” in its international iteration at this evening’s Cafe event, where they join to discuss making sound art about slavery.

Ralph Hoyte Phill Phelps +1
post

Steart is Gurt

We, the Bristol-based artist, filmmaker and producer, Simone Einfalt and the Bristol poet, writer and located audio designer Ralph Hoyte are delighted to be working with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) on our ‘The Three Waters’ scoping study at Steart Marshes (Bridgwater Bay/Somerset/England) from early September 2025. We are hugely excited to be part

Ralph Hoyte Simone Einfalt
Sound walk

The Ocean Explorer Trail

A ‘treasure hunt’ style interactive audio walk around Southampton’s Houndwell Park. Help find the clues and save the treasure from pirates.

Sage Fitzpatrick
Sound walk

Bergen Open Form Pavilion of Air / Bergen Åpen Form Paviljong av Luft

A floating roof of sound in Bergen, GPS-triggered & accessed by headphones & Echoes app to playfully reframe public space as an essential community engagement. One of 15 in an international series drawing on Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s Open Form concept.

Robert Curgenven
Sound walk

Eighty Thousand Steps

What if you could walk into a story? Welcome to a profound new immersive experience that moves you—literally. Eighty Thousand Steps is a first-of-its-kind embodied story that asks you to walk with a refugee. You power this story, one step at a time.

Crystal Chan
Curated news

-MONOPOLY Leeds Takeover: Transforming Urban Space into an Interactive Game Board-

Experience the magic of MONOPOLY in Leeds as the city centre becomes an immersive, life-sized game board, celebrating its rich board game heritage. Source: -MONOPOLY Leeds Takeover: Transforming Urban Space into an Interactive Game Board-

cascade

Collection · 1 items

Floating

Collection · 7 items

Interactive

Collection · 50 items

Regions

Bristol

City · 27 items

Related

video

Afloat on the sea of sound there are seven ghost slave ships

Located audio sound artists Ralph Hoyte and Phill Phelps launch their latest located audio sound art work “Colston’s Last Journey” in its international iteration at this evening’s Cafe event, where they join to discuss making sound art about slavery.

Ralph Hoyte Phill Phelps +1
post

Steart is Gurt

We, the Bristol-based artist, filmmaker and producer, Simone Einfalt and the Bristol poet, writer and located audio designer Ralph Hoyte are delighted to be working with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) on our ‘The Three Waters’ scoping study at Steart Marshes (Bridgwater Bay/Somerset/England) from early September 2025. We are hugely excited to be part

Ralph Hoyte Simone Einfalt
Sound walk

The Ocean Explorer Trail

A ‘treasure hunt’ style interactive audio walk around Southampton’s Houndwell Park. Help find the clues and save the treasure from pirates.

Sage Fitzpatrick
Sound walk

Bergen Open Form Pavilion of Air / Bergen Åpen Form Paviljong av Luft

A floating roof of sound in Bergen, GPS-triggered & accessed by headphones & Echoes app to playfully reframe public space as an essential community engagement. One of 15 in an international series drawing on Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s Open Form concept.

Robert Curgenven
Sound walk

Eighty Thousand Steps

What if you could walk into a story? Welcome to a profound new immersive experience that moves you—literally. Eighty Thousand Steps is a first-of-its-kind embodied story that asks you to walk with a refugee. You power this story, one step at a time.

Crystal Chan
Curated news

-MONOPOLY Leeds Takeover: Transforming Urban Space into an Interactive Game Board-

Experience the magic of MONOPOLY in Leeds as the city centre becomes an immersive, life-sized game board, celebrating its rich board game heritage. Source: -MONOPOLY Leeds Takeover: Transforming Urban Space into an Interactive Game Board-

Sound walk
Colston’s Last Journey: set sail on a sea of interactive sound layered over Bristol city centre upon which float the ghosts of 9 slave ships. Each of these audio ghost ships represents one facet of the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans

Colston’s Last Journey is a work of perambulatory soundart. The work’s theme is Bristol and the Transatlantic Trafficking of Enslaved Africans. A sea of interactive audio is layered over the whole of Bristol city centre from the Colston plinth to where Colston’s statue was plunged into the Floating Harbour at Pero’s Bridge in June 2020. You experience the work by downloading the experience onto your smartphone and going to the Colston plinth. Here you put on headphones (or earbuds) and, after onboarding and background, you are set afloat on ‘a sea’ of interactive audio. As you wander around within this ‘sea’ along the historic Broad Quay fragments of facts, various statements, re-created dialogues, names of captains, slave trade statistics, lost voices, voices of resistance, whispers of the damned, mini-dramas (recorded from Hoyte’s script by professional voice artists) etc arise out of its depths and spiral in to you, set against a background of specially composed music (by Phill Phelps and Saki Yamada). Afloat or moored upon this ever-changing sea of sound are 9 audio ghost ships. These are the ghosts of real ships which set sail from HERE, from Bristol, from THIS very port more than 250 years ago bound for the coast of West Africa, and then on to the West Indies, trafficking enslaved Africans. Each ghost ship represents one facet of the trade in enslaved Africans and when you find one of these ghost ships you can ‘board’ it and listen in to what it has to say. You continue along Bristol city centre to the Cascade waterfall, then along the left-hand side of the water towards Pero’s Bridge. Crossing the bridge, you experience the work’s denouement – then it ends where the Colston statue was pitched into the muddy waters of the Bristol Floating Harbour – with, of course, a god-all-mighty SPLASH! Colston’s Last Journey also has a ‘portable’ iteration – you can roll out a version of the work over any statue of an enslaver or location of enslavement anywhere in the world you choose.

APA style reference

Hoyte, R. (2023). Colston’s Last Journey. walk · listen · create. https://walklistencreate.org/walkingpiece/colstons-last-journey/

traivel

Walk: He’s traivelled mony a lang gaet.

Added by Janette Kerr
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