The garden sound environment commissioned and created for the Sonoma County Museum in Santa Rosa is officially open for visitors as of November 1, 2011. It is permanently on exhibition in the Evert and Norma Person Sound & Sculpture Garden in downtown Santa Rosa, a garden designed by Fred Warnecke with analog electronics installation by PCD Audio-Video Integration.
New instruments added thanks to the support of the Fleishhacker Foundation.
The garden can be visited only with museum admission, Tuesday-Sunday, 11-5.
Mar 30, 2012, 5-7pm: Lecture and garden tour by Hugh Livingston at the Norma & Evert Person Sound & Sculpture Garden, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Hugh Livingston will also have a related exhibition in the museum's East Gallery from June 8-August 6, 2012.
New instruments added thanks to the support of the Fleishhacker Foundation.
The garden can be visited only with museum admission, Tuesday-Sunday, 11-5.
Mar 30, 2012, 5-7pm: Lecture and garden tour by Hugh Livingston at the Norma & Evert Person Sound & Sculpture Garden, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Hugh Livingston will also have a related exhibition in the museum's East Gallery from June 8-August 6, 2012.
Sound & Place: Sixteen-Channel Permanent Sound Installation
The artwork consists of computer software which generates soundscapes in real-time, varying constantly throughout the day, ebbing and flowing with sonic energy, just like the Sonoma winds. The software distributes the snippets of sound through 16 speakers, creating different kinds of movement energy in alternation. The soundscapes are designed to invoke behaviors in the garden space: sometimes lingering, a meditative experience like smelling a single rose; sometimes strolling, following a bird that flits down the path ahead.
Three programs are heard in randomized alternation throughout the day. The first is short rhythmic cells that intersect and cross-pollinate across the garden. All of the sounds were recorded underwater in the Russian River and its feeder creeks using a hydrophone. They are then chopped into small bits - the sound of one bubble popping - and organized into a musical scale and short, irregularly accented rhythmic groups. A tight rhythmic order is created out of the rushing and tumbling river.
The second program is a sort of sonic haiku: the computer chooses either 5 or 7 sounds from a large vocabulary, and presents them all at once as a single poetic gesture. Each of the 16 speakers has its own little verse. After some suitable interval of silence, the gesture repeats, but this time the 7 sounds are in a different order. There is a sense of familiarity, yet the gesture takes on a new meaning through its temporal reorganization. The nature sounds were recorded along the river over the last two years.
The third program moves more into the melodic realm, consisting of instrumental (and some avian) gestures which are panned through a set of 4 or 6 speakers in a relatively small circle, dividing up the long stretch of the garden space into multiple local zones. We hear a set of variations as these melodic fragments dart about, intersecting with each other, engaging in brief dialogue, and then flitting off. It is like a garden set for an opera, where the audience can roam through, following the individual voices of each character in the drama, or resting in one place to hear the voices that happen by.
Three programs are heard in randomized alternation throughout the day. The first is short rhythmic cells that intersect and cross-pollinate across the garden. All of the sounds were recorded underwater in the Russian River and its feeder creeks using a hydrophone. They are then chopped into small bits - the sound of one bubble popping - and organized into a musical scale and short, irregularly accented rhythmic groups. A tight rhythmic order is created out of the rushing and tumbling river.
The second program is a sort of sonic haiku: the computer chooses either 5 or 7 sounds from a large vocabulary, and presents them all at once as a single poetic gesture. Each of the 16 speakers has its own little verse. After some suitable interval of silence, the gesture repeats, but this time the 7 sounds are in a different order. There is a sense of familiarity, yet the gesture takes on a new meaning through its temporal reorganization. The nature sounds were recorded along the river over the last two years.
The third program moves more into the melodic realm, consisting of instrumental (and some avian) gestures which are panned through a set of 4 or 6 speakers in a relatively small circle, dividing up the long stretch of the garden space into multiple local zones. We hear a set of variations as these melodic fragments dart about, intersecting with each other, engaging in brief dialogue, and then flitting off. It is like a garden set for an opera, where the audience can roam through, following the individual voices of each character in the drama, or resting in one place to hear the voices that happen by.
