The City of Water, audio postcards to remember the Alhambra and Generalife

The Alhambra and its memory; sound, light and landscape… The moment. This is The City of Water. 12 audio postcards from the Alhambra and Generalife, a pioneering project in Spain which will enable you to e-mail multimedia messages to friends and family via the Alhambra website.
This morning the Director of the Council of the Alhambra and Generalife, María del Mar Villafranca, presented the project alongside its two creators, the composer and artist, José Iges, who also has a Ph.D. in information Sciences, and the intermedia artist, Concha Jeréz, who have devised this project together under the supervision of the Council. “There was always been a tradition of sending postcards from a place like this in which the visitor enjoys the heritage experience to the full. Now visitors to the Alhambra of the 21st-century can send virtual postcards with audiovisual contents which will ensure an unforgettable souvenir of their visit”, Villafranca remarked.
The City of Water (Ciudad de Agua), a website that can be accessed from the Alhambra website allows you to e-mail any of the postcards to a friend by clicking on the “Email This Page” icon situated in the bottom left hand corner of each page. You can also browse through each of the 12 postcards, through which “the user will instantly evoke the memories, sensations and emotions experienced by visitors to such a magical place as the Alhambra” said José Iges.
For her part, Concha Jerez explained that The City of Water is an “attractive composition of sounds, which combines landscape and interpretative features. We have created a means of immersing oneself in the Alhambra and its gardens through the sound of water, taking the listener on a path that reveals its gentle murmur and its cool rich qualities as it flows through the palaces”.
The City of Water was inspired by a piece made by José Iges and Concha Jeréz for the Australian radio station ABC in Sydney in 1994. The materials for this new project have been distributed in 12 audiovisual postcards, as happened with the Sydney piece. The postcards have been made with sounds from the radio piece, and with photographic and video contents recorded in the Monument by the authors specifically for this multimedia project.
Villafranca pointed out that “this project responds to one of the objectives set out in Strategic Line 4 (The Alhambra in the Information and Communication Society) of the Monument’s Master Plan. The Alhambra has always been a part of cultural imagery and has been a source of inspiration for countless artists. This new project has turned the monument into a stage in which artists have produced works linked to contemporary creation, landscape and architecture as a form of artistic expression, in an appeal to all creative languages”.
For more information, please visit www.alhambra-patronato.es