Listening Gardens
The concept of a viewing garden is
familiar. It is a garden designed for the eyes.
Often viewing gardens are not entered bodily; their use
and aesthetic is purely visual and discretionary. The
listening gardens of this project are, analogously, designed
for the ears, not to be entered bodily, and dependent on the
listener's (as well as the designer's) discretion. Listening
Gardens are most of all intended to be experienced in real
time. Sounds from selected outdoor areas are brought
indoors to a listening and mixing site. There the
listener may choose which site's sounds to hear and emphasize,
whether to hear sounds of one, two, three or four sites
simultaneously or sequentially, and how to variously combine
their intensities.
If one builds a Listening Garden based on
the forms and features of a more traditional, spatially
constructed garden (particularly in an urban or suburban
setting) sound's resistance to spatial boundaries likely
becomes all too apparent. While intermittent sounds of
phenomena such as acorns dropping and squirrels' scolding
chattering may be obvious, we must often "listen
under" ambient noise to hear such sounds as leaves
rustling in the breeze.
Yet pervasive ambient sounds include those
of evening insects as well as rush-hour traffic, and they often
sound different at different sites. It becomes clear how
visual aspects of the environment can affect our experience of
its sounds; for example, if that which we see pleases us and
also blocks our sight of an undesirable noise's source, it is a
better psychological barrier - the nuisance noise is
experienced as less intrusive. On the other hand, we seem
to associate movement with sound, and therefore if we see trees
bending in the wind we are more attuned to the sounds they make
when doing so, even though those sound may be very subtle.
And a visually unobtrusive site may yield surprisingly
rich sounds.A Listening Garden also sharpens one's awareness to
how sounds change over the course of a day. These gardens
are most of all intended for experience in real time.
One Listening Garden:
This garden is comprised of four sound
sites around the building where the indoor listening station
and an electronic mixer are located: 1) a tree branch
overhanging the building's roof from the north, 2) the area
beneath a laurel oak tree which is in an extremely heavy
acorn-dropping phase, 3) a cast bronze water-work, and 4) a
compost bin in which insects feast mightily. Microphones
at each site are connected to the listening station and mixer.
It is up to each listener, or group of listeners, to
select and compose their own "gardens."
Documentation:
Two of a multitude of possible listening
garden compositions are documented on sound CDs. On the
Afternoon portion one hears sounds from each site sequentially;
one moves from the smallest and most localized sounds of the
compost bin to the most loudest, diffused and expansive sounds
of the roof. On the Evening portion, the initial
sequential order of the first four selections is reversed --
one moves from the expansive to the earth-bound. Mixes of
sites' sounds follow, but one site's sounds are dominant and
continuous in each mix until the finale.
