Cultivating the "Sound Garden"
IU composer and sound artist Norbert Herber creates an interactive sonic experience
Are you ready to make some noise?!
For his latest project, Sound Garden, which will be open to the public during the annual ArtsWeek celebration at Indiana University Bloomington, composer and self-described "sound artist" Norbert Herber is giving YOU a chance to contribute to a unique, interactive musical composition.
A computer screenshot of the software behind the "Sound Garden"
Herber is a lecturer in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington. His work is focused on the use of sound in interactive environments, nonlinear and experimental composition, and "emergent music" -- a genre rooted in artificial life systems. His works have been performed or exhibited in Europe, Asia, South America and the United States.
The Sound Garden installation, which will be situated in IU's Radio-TV Building from Feb. 21 through March 3, is designed to explore the relationship of people, location and audio relative to technology. In this context, Herber explains, "people" include those who use, visit, listen to and tend the garden. Location means both physical and virtual spaces, and audio refers to manifestations of sound, silence, noise and music.
Just as gardeners plant, water, fertilize, weed and prune their gardens, visitors to the Sound Garden will tend their sonic environment and take an active role in its composition and care, Herber says. Using a Web browser to select from a menu, they'll cultivate the "garden" by providing their own short recordings, samples, soundscapes and found sonic objects.
The Sound Garden will also be available online at http://www.x-tet.com/soundgarden/.
Here are some of Herber's thoughts on Sound Garden and the sonic experience he hopes visitors to the garden will have:
On the idea behind his research -- that a linear work of music cannot respond to the changes or "shifts of state" within an interactive environment -- and what this means in the context of Sound Garden
Basically, my Ph.D. research is focused on ways that music making can be re-conceptualized to better complement the dynamics of mediated art, entertainment and communications. There are new opportunities for music in these genres but many of them are either overlooked or not fully explored. Sound Garden is a project that allows me to try some new ideas and illustrate a few of the larger concepts in what will eventually be part of my doctoral thesis.
"Sound Garden" will explore the use of technology such as environmental sensors that track ambient light levels, temperature, motion and vibration, and act on individual sounds that compose the garden.
On the ultimate goal behind Sound Garden and what he hopes people come away with from this experience
I used to work as a jazz saxophone player. I remember leaving gigs at night feeling a sense of satisfaction in "the music that was made by the group," and by this I mean whatever was played by myself and everyone in the band that night. When you had a good night it was usually because everyone in the group was working to make good music. I'd like the interaction of Sound Garden to adopt this quality, where everyone who participates works to tend the garden, leading it in interesting musical directions over the course of the next few weeks.
The subtitle, "asynchronous improvisation" reveals a characteristic of this piece that I hope people will really enjoy. "Improvisation" because everyone who participates is making an individual musical contribution based on what they hear in the garden. Improvising musicians don't just play because they want to make sounds, they are engaging in a musical dialogue; they play because there is something to say. "Asynchronous" because this isn't a live performance. It is experienced in real time, but the music isn't necessarily made in real time. Someone in Bloomington may plant a file on Thursday morning. That file is heard in the garden later Thursday afternoon by someone in Los Angeles. They plant another sound in response and both sounds are now in the garden for someone to hear on Friday. It could happen that just around the same time the first gardener is listening to hear what their sound is doing, someone in New York is planting another new sound as a response to the last two. The dialogue that has been happening since Thursday has finally come back to the person who initiated it. Their response to the response can go in a variety of directions and on and on ... this approach opens the generative musical structure to perturbations from outside sources. Unlike a lot of generative music that runs according to its own algorithm, Sound Garden is additionally open to external input. It responds to that input and allows for others to respond as well. One of the main sources of input is the environmental conditions in the Radio-TV Center (the site of the installation). The garden has sensors that are tracking light levels, temperature, motion and vibration. As people move through the space, or as time passes and the day becomes brighter or warmer, the garden will grow differently.
More of Herber's work can be found at http://www.x-tet.com.
For information about other events scheduled during ArtsWeek 2007, go to http://www.artsweek.indiana.edu.
