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Hugh Livingston creates large-scale public events that meld soundscapes with theatre, architecture, landscape and sculptural installations. Most notable is his semi-annual event, scenes from a lingering garden, at the Kaiser Rooftop Garden in Oakland. These events are designed for botanical gardens and similar public places, and they promote strolling and appreciating with all the senses. Hugh has composed and produced a large-scale river opera on the banks of the Russian River in Sonoma County.
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installations
Hugh creates permanent sound environments for public and private gardens. Tailored to the client and the site's natural basis, the compositions range from integration of Gregorian chant to a Zen garden approach with water and bamboo instruments. His work has been installed in gardens by Yoji Sasaki, Ace Architects and Theodore Osmundson, and Hugh is designing projects for the unique American landscapes of Frederick Law Olmsted.
Read more about private garden sound. |
Public Installations
Livingston Sound projects can be heard at the Sonoma County Museum (Santa Rosa CA), LISTEN EDGEMAR (Santa Monica CA) and the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Washington DC. Other significant private or temporary projects include Hybrid Birds, Garden Party, Invisible Shadows, a St. Francis of Assisi Garden.
Some Thoughts about Gardens and Sound
I classify the role of site-specific soundscapes for the built environment according to two types of behaviors: the lingering garden, and the strolling garden. The lingering garden is a conceit of Song Dynasty poets, made real in Suzhou outside Shanghai in the 4thC BCE; one with depth of color and texture in a space, with a drip of water or a swish of bamboo. You perch on a rock, wait for the finch to return and whistle a tune, feel the wind swirl the pines. The strolling garden, by contrast, leads you, to a far corner, up a grade, around a hedge to unveil a new vista. Like the visitor in T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a bird leads through the Burnt Norton rose garden, flitting from branch to branch as the garden unfolds. It was said of the early Picturesque gardens to emerge in England in the Renaissance, in contrast to the rigor of traditional French symmetrical parterres, that they were the first gardens to "validate the stroll". My soundscapes mirror these goals, matched to the design and function of the garden experience.
Aesthetics and Functionality
The Livingston Sound solution for private gardens is at the intersection of technology (providing continuously evolving real-time generation of music and multi-channel immersive spatialization) and artwork. More nuanced than a fountain, more sophisticated than a windchime, in counterpoint to the natural energies of birdsong and wind, timed to the hours of the day and the usage of the garden space, the Livingston Sound composition fills an aesthetic need that complements the natural environment. It also serves some basic functional needs, especially the elimination of traffic noise through a unique application of Sound Cocoon(tm) technology.
Aesthetics and Functionality
The Livingston Sound solution for private gardens is at the intersection of technology (providing continuously evolving real-time generation of music and multi-channel immersive spatialization) and artwork. More nuanced than a fountain, more sophisticated than a windchime, in counterpoint to the natural energies of birdsong and wind, timed to the hours of the day and the usage of the garden space, the Livingston Sound composition fills an aesthetic need that complements the natural environment. It also serves some basic functional needs, especially the elimination of traffic noise through a unique application of Sound Cocoon(tm) technology.
History of Sound in Gardens
I envision sound as an integral part of our landscape perception, and deserving of exploration as a frontier of landscape design. There is much history to this approach, especially in the garden traditions of China, Japan and Persia. Of Chinese gardens, the Tang poem advises: “plant pine to hear the sound of the wind; plant banana to hear the sound of the rain.” The tonal quality of the ancient zither guqin closely complements nature. It is deliberately not an instrument for concert hall performance, but to be played outside, under a pine tree, next to a meandering stream.
Japanese gardens such as Ryoanji articulate a conceptual approach which certainly relates to musical form. The richest aspect of the Japanese aesthetic is the cataloging of emotion inherent in the creative process, as in counting hundreds of styles of stone to be used in a garden’s design. I have been creating a response in sound, and even devised an algorithm to generate music where one sound is always obscured by the presence of the others, just as Ryoanji controls the viewpoint. Natural sounding experiences are inherent to Japanese gardens, such as the kusari doi (rain chains), suikinkutsu (buried pots of water), and shishi-odoshi (bamboo pipes that tap to frighten the deer), which add rhythm and tone to complement the sounds of flowing water. Instruments like shakuhachi, the bamboo flute, come out of a tradition of listening to nature, and indeed its breathy sound is linked to the sound of wind gusts in a bamboo grove.
I recently attended a Garden Conservancy seminar on the history and modernity of Persian gardens, hoping that in the Q&A I could raise some issues about the presence of natural and musical sound in the garden; instead, I found that all five historical lectures mentioned these aspects as inherent in the experience! From the requisite flowing channels of water which added a strong acoustical reinforcement of cooling effect to the modest environmental effect, to the sound of nightingales celebrated by virtually every poet of the Persian renaissance, to the use of plucked string instruments at dusk to transport one’s mood from the bright sunshine of day to the cool desert evenings: sound has been integrated into the tapestry of the garden experience for centuries.
While the cultural traditions I have mentioned tend towards the ‘exotic’, we also have Western traditions which inform my attempt to create a contemporary practice. Starting perhaps with the ‘hortus conclusus’, where plainchant, or pious songs accompanied by a lute, might have been sung by maidens taking the veil, garden music soon evolved into chamber music for the family and from there to larger and larger theatrical productions.
But it was in the Renaissance that the quest for outdoor living as a measure of social status really took shape, and with it the creation of “fêtes”, “entertainments”, and “plays”, so called because the royal court participated, as opposed to dramas where they did not. In Italy, the extravagances extended to fountains, automata, fireworks, talking statues, naturally resonant grottoes. In France and England there were diverse traditions that honored the royal families with allegorical masques, Versailles being the apotheosis of the giant outdoor entertainment complex.
In Italy there was also the emergence of the Teatro di Verzura, a theater of greenery which provided some modest acoustic effect but a strong theatrical effect, with rows of cypress mimicking the wings of a stage, and some Greek statuary thrown in for effect. Paired with grottoes, flowing water, miniature amphitheaters and Picturesque scenes for the stroller to discover, these gardens became early amusement parks, waiting for the evening audience to complete the dramatic effect.
Japanese gardens such as Ryoanji articulate a conceptual approach which certainly relates to musical form. The richest aspect of the Japanese aesthetic is the cataloging of emotion inherent in the creative process, as in counting hundreds of styles of stone to be used in a garden’s design. I have been creating a response in sound, and even devised an algorithm to generate music where one sound is always obscured by the presence of the others, just as Ryoanji controls the viewpoint. Natural sounding experiences are inherent to Japanese gardens, such as the kusari doi (rain chains), suikinkutsu (buried pots of water), and shishi-odoshi (bamboo pipes that tap to frighten the deer), which add rhythm and tone to complement the sounds of flowing water. Instruments like shakuhachi, the bamboo flute, come out of a tradition of listening to nature, and indeed its breathy sound is linked to the sound of wind gusts in a bamboo grove.
I recently attended a Garden Conservancy seminar on the history and modernity of Persian gardens, hoping that in the Q&A I could raise some issues about the presence of natural and musical sound in the garden; instead, I found that all five historical lectures mentioned these aspects as inherent in the experience! From the requisite flowing channels of water which added a strong acoustical reinforcement of cooling effect to the modest environmental effect, to the sound of nightingales celebrated by virtually every poet of the Persian renaissance, to the use of plucked string instruments at dusk to transport one’s mood from the bright sunshine of day to the cool desert evenings: sound has been integrated into the tapestry of the garden experience for centuries.
While the cultural traditions I have mentioned tend towards the ‘exotic’, we also have Western traditions which inform my attempt to create a contemporary practice. Starting perhaps with the ‘hortus conclusus’, where plainchant, or pious songs accompanied by a lute, might have been sung by maidens taking the veil, garden music soon evolved into chamber music for the family and from there to larger and larger theatrical productions.
But it was in the Renaissance that the quest for outdoor living as a measure of social status really took shape, and with it the creation of “fêtes”, “entertainments”, and “plays”, so called because the royal court participated, as opposed to dramas where they did not. In Italy, the extravagances extended to fountains, automata, fireworks, talking statues, naturally resonant grottoes. In France and England there were diverse traditions that honored the royal families with allegorical masques, Versailles being the apotheosis of the giant outdoor entertainment complex.
In Italy there was also the emergence of the Teatro di Verzura, a theater of greenery which provided some modest acoustic effect but a strong theatrical effect, with rows of cypress mimicking the wings of a stage, and some Greek statuary thrown in for effect. Paired with grottoes, flowing water, miniature amphitheaters and Picturesque scenes for the stroller to discover, these gardens became early amusement parks, waiting for the evening audience to complete the dramatic effect.
