WHITE PAPER: SOUND ART IN PUBLIC SPACES Charlie Morrow Over the past decades, sound art has

been growing in importance, both in terms of numbers of practicing sound artists and growing audiences and in terms of its interest to museums, presenting organizations, collectors, galleries and public art commissions. There are dedicated sound art galleries such as Diapason in New York and Sound Art Museum in Italy as well as shows and festivals in major museums and venues around the world. Architects are beginning to contract sound artists for their projects. Installation of sound art in public spaces is increasing as the world becomes more and more tuned to our audio environment. The palate of sound art is fresh to public ears, ears accustomed to portable mp3 player sound, mobile phones and computer audio. And we know that the public is quick to react to sound art installation. Many architects and experience designers are thinking in sounds as well as physical shapes and flat art images. Landscape architects have long shaped the sonic environments of parks and sensory gardens, as well as sacred and daily spaces. Recently, soundscaping has become a hot item in the design of residential and business real estate developments, as it has long been for institutional and corporate estates. Given the expense of altering the prevailing noise environments, current thinking is to use sound art to make such environments more interesting and less audibly oppressive. Paleontologists tell us that all creatures, including humans, hear what they need to hear to live effectively and have fun in our habitats. This pragmatic perspective brings an extraordinary range of social and biological insights as well as aesthetic vision to the design of sonic experiences in public spaces. This white paper addresses the history and practice of sound art, and sets forth contemporary strategies for new projects in public spaces.

(c)2007 Charles Morrow, New York, NY USA all rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS WHAT IS SOUND ART? SOUND ART AND INTERACTIVITY HEARING VS. LISTENING VISCERAL SOUND, INSIDE THE BODY AND MIND THE SENSE OF PLACE 3D SOUND OBSERVATION AND DISCOVERY SOUND AND MEMORY CLOCKS, ALARMS AND MONUMENTS SONIC SURVEILLANCE SOUND AND TIME SOUND AND LIGHT TACTILE SOUND SOUND CANCELLATION SOUND CONTEXT AND MASKING MANAGING AMBIANT NOISE AS A SOUND ART OPPORTUNITY PERFORMANCE AND SOUND ART SOUND AND LANGUAGE LITERATURE AND POETRY OF SOUND SOUND ART AND SOCIAL INTERACTION BIO-ORCHESTRATION THE ANIMATION OF PUBLIC SPACES

WHAT IS SOUND ART? Sound art is sonic architecture. It is the art of sonic installations, objects, environments and thoughts. It can be performative as well. Sound artists come from a wide range of disciplines, since the means for creating and working with sounds are quite diverse. Some sound art works are objects, some are environments, some are emanations from loudspeakers and headphones. While much contemporary practice is electronic, sound art encompasses physical, mechanical, electromechanical and purely psychological and conceptual means. There are sound makers, environment makers and combinations. Physical sound art works include sound sculptures, sound listening posts, wind harps and flutes, waterfalls and fountains, steam devices, found and acoustically designed indoor and outdoor spaces, bio-orchestrations (working with sound-making life forms), as well as resonance and excitation works. Sounding clocks and garden noise makers are traditional sound objects, as are natural and fashioned bells, pipes, vibrating wires and wind shapers. Whispering walls and other curved reflectors form another category akin to the acoustic designs of public spaces. Sound art is kin to physical and landscape architecture. It is involved with the perception of spaces. Sound art enjoys a relationship to physicality and "sculptural" or spatial concerns such as movement, mass, accumulation and disintegration, significant as sculpture always exists in time. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is often interdisciplinary. Common creative techniques in electronic sound art include collage and cut-up, repetition, spatial manipulation, and signal processing. Some works are episodic, others continuous; many are intended to be heard differently each time. Some contemporary sound art is a new media art practice rooted in early 20th century experimentation. From the Western art historical tradition early examples include the Italian Futurist "Intonarumori" or noise machines created by Luigi Russolo, and subsequent experiments by Dadaists, Surrealists, the Situationist International, Fluxus, Happenings, and many other contemporary practitioners. Russolo stated (in his 1913 essay, "The Art of Noise") "This musical evolution is paralleled by the multiplication of machines" and indeed, as technology evolvesbecoming increasingly available, mobile, and integrated throughout our lives, the world of sound art has also exploded into various forms, concerns, and approaches. Though some sound artists are inspired by the history and practice of experimental or "avant garde" music, it is important to note that works of sound art are classified by one major school of thought as not music for a variety of formal, conceptual, and political reasons. In that perspective, the issues sound art is concerned with are not musical in nature. That position runs counter to the broad view of music of John Cage and avoids

the issues raised by sound sculptors like Bertoia and Russolo whose works are sculptural and playable as music instruments. In fact, musical instrument building is cousin to sound art if not sound art itself. Consider ancestral sound-making to be the evocation of the power of animal, vegetable and inanimate materials. Consider contemporary musical instruments as art objects. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are spoken word, avant-garde poetry, and experimental theater. Well-known early practitioners include Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Henri-Martin Barzun of the Zurich-based Dada group, who in 1916 performed works of phonetic poetry or Pome Simulatane (simultaneous poems) at the Cabaret Voltaire. These sound-based compositions emphasized sonic rather than semantic expression. A common ground for all sound art is listening itself and the focusing of attention. Another is interactivity. Does the work play on demand? Is it ambient or foreground with cycles and silences? And in public installations, what is the relationship to the public?

SOUND ART AND INTERACTIVITY Sound art is interactive in character and often in design. Interactivity can refer both to interactions between people and sound art and to the environment and sound art. Since it brings attention to itself through sound, it is louder than a painting. Traditional sound art such as the metal hand clanged doorbell or the wind driven, bird-chasing noise makers in the garden have a clear interactive intent. Other sound art works are purely aesthetic but by virtue of their pull on listeners ears stimulate actions and interactions. Functionality and interactivity are closely related design issues. In public and domestic settings, settings, they have social implications. It has been argued that engaging the active attention of listeners to a symphony is interactivity. In fact acoustic optimization and isolation in concert hall design is part of this strategy. However, interactive sound art is usually more physical and not strictly mental, ranging from the carnival big hammer bell ring to the pinball machine to game playing with sensor fields. Sound art's potential for interactivity is a serious matter in public installations. For reasons hidden in the psyche of neighborhoods, public art and hence public sound art, draw a wide range of reactions: pleasure, attraction, conversation, gossip, complaints and vandalism. Since not everyone feels the same about public art, an important part of the process of creation and installation is the public and community political process. It is important to work with local noise regulations, curfew hours and to communicate what is going on with signage. Sound art must be carefully planned, publicly discussed and monitored. Sound art touches the entire community surrounding it. Locations away from residences and businesses may offer greater freedom with unexplained, loud or more aggressive sound expressions. Alternatively, guerilla sound art has its own power. Impromptu performances unbidden in trains, supermarkets and highways have made their mark. Sound trucks rolling through towns, unexpected sirens, war soundscapes and sonic emergencies are part of sound art. Such interventions can bring the predictable encounter with authorities.

HEARING VS. LISTENING "Do you think there is a difference between hearing and listening? You are right, there is! Hearing is simply the act of perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearingimpaired, hearing simply happens. Listening, however, is something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences. Listening leads to learning. Most people tend to be hard of listening rather than hard of hearing."
University of Minnesota Student Handbook 2007 http://www.d.umn.edu/kmc/student/loon/acad/strat/ss_hearing.html

VISCERAL SOUND. INSIDE THE BODY AND MIND Sound is felt as well as heard. If enters the body through the skin and bones as well as the ears. Some people report feeling sound on their eyeballs. Sound arrives in the air, in water, through the earth, through vibrating objects. The intensity of the sound as well as its identity, its source, registers in the perception. The mind and body catalogue it and send that complex into the experience memories which are mental and physical. The internal mix of listening and understanding explains the view that music is both an outer and inner experience. Vibrations on the body have diverse effects, such a pain, pleasure and healing. Sound art and music have access to this extensive vocabulary and recipes. THE SENSE OF PLACE We experience locations through our ears as well as our eyes and other sense organs. Knowing where we are and what this location holds for us is fundamental. Each location has a unique sound signature which is its ambience and environmental sounds, as well as a population of sounds from machines, devices and life forms including the observer. Humans are equipped to find their way through sandstorms, sea storms, dark nights and avalanches, situations where visual information is not available. A blindfolded walk offers an opportunity to navigate with ones ears and to experience the world of the blind. In blind restaurants, one eats in the dark and may be served by blind servers. Listening interprets location soundscapes for survival, wayfinding and aesthetic pleasure. Listening and hearing are both tied to the sense of balance. The inner ear reads the position of the head and the body relative to gravity. Vertigo can be produced sonically and by physically moving the listener.

Nature and architects create places. The experience of place flows from the site itself, the materials of the site and its surfaces, the climate within and without, and the resident populations. Of particular interest is the acknowledgement of and the creation of sacred spaces. Sense of place is a broad subject which is explored in this white paper only in relationship to sound. Swiss sound artist, Andres Bosshard, worked with several masters in India who taught that every room, every building, every city has its sound. There are Indian cities, built on ancient principals of sonic architecture, which are now of great interest for contemporary experience and study. Sound art can create audio places which are then inhabited and experienced by listeners. Both indoor and outdoor installations have this architectural power. Scale and size are marvelously flexible in sound. A tiny cricket in a cricket cage can fill a hall, just as thousands of crickets can paint a summer day. Sacred sites are of special interest because they are identified by their sacred powers. They are places for prayer, meditation, communion, music, oratory, ceremony and sound art. The Temple of Solomon is described as having a giant hydraulic organ that sounded one loud tone audible across the River Jordan. The second temple organ had three notes. Like temple bells, these hydraulic organ tones are calls to worship. Prayer flags are sacred sound makers with the magical task of carrying their prayer text as the textile wears out in time and becomes scattered molecules. Nepalese sacred water wheels, in their often perilously located special houses, each rotate with their own mantra. Japanese garden ornaments fill with water and then fall over with a click and a gush. http://www.aquaart.com/lwshishi.html The City of New York has erected a plaque in honor of the complex audio waveforms and hums of the Brooklyn Bridge being driven over by cars, as heard from river banks at ground level beneath its span on the Manhattan shore. Self discovery and listening are themes that inform the Neuhaus' sound works which have no signage and are ambiguous as to whether they are art or found environments. Soundscapes in media, outdoors and in interiors create sound scenes, architectures and worlds. They range from captured environments to created ones and all sorts of blends. They rely on control of sound content, sound isolation, sound resonance, sound reflection and sound absorption. Typically, a first step in planning a soundscape project is a site visit to document and analyze ambient sounds and sources as well as the acoustic characteristics of the location. Scenography, gardening, landscape architecture, sound design as well as sound art include real world and virtual sonic location making. The power of these creations lies both in their working with the aspects of perception that constitute our sense of location and in their evocating of memories and thoughts in the listener who completes each scenario within themselves.

3D SOUND Sound in the world is immersive and in 3D. Our perception is built to localize sounds for identification, hunting and self protection. Our facial anatomy, the checks, nose, ears and skull are linked to the sound localization processing in the brain. Hearing is a differential process, encompassing instant calculations by the brain, taking into account the head formation, individual sound sources and ambiences. With a 3D loudspeaker space, such as the MorrowSound cube, or binaural sound in headphones, one can enter a virtual sound world in 3D. A 3D sound field can takes over the sound space from the architecture. It can transport listeners to a new place dynamically. It can make a space feel larger or smaller, in motion or surrounded by moving sounds. 2D sound reproduction, monaural, stereo and surround is flat by contrast, lacking the critical vertical component. In 2D sound cannot move up and down. It interacts with the room acoustics to fill a space, but the only sonic motion is left and right, forward and backward. Binaural sound is 3D sound on headphones. It can be as powerful as 3D sound on loudspeakers. There can be translation of sound between 3D and binaural format. All forms of sound reproduction and generation are valid aesthetically. Each format has its own good qualities. Translation between these formats offers interesting aesthetic and technical challenges. Designing a public sound installation, choices are made based on the concept, format, budget, maintenance and impact.

OBSERVATION AND DISCOVERY It was a rumbling sound. Heard from the pillow, it could be a snowplow Head up, it became the gurgling, whistling coffee maker Every place is different and it is the uniqueness of each location that makes aural observation and discovery particular for each listener. The sound art objects and experiences are affected as well by how many other people are observing and where they are located. The atmosphere of the world connects everything sonically, as does water environments. In air and water worlds, multiple sonic events occur, from the environmental to the tiny, each in their own shape and time. The listener teases them apart through focus and assembles them in the brain according to personal, aesthetic and biological priorities. Some say this is a process of looking for connections and stories. Music unfolds over time, even if it is a steady sound unchanging. Sound art objects and environments unfold over time as well. This unfolding is in the listeners mind and related to attention and interest. John Cage suggested that one should listen over and over again until one hears something of interest. Infants hear everything and over time learn what everything is. Discovery is perceptual, intellectual and emotional. Discovery and the seeds of discovery are key to sound installations and content. The discovery part of the work such as a surveillance monitor, Stephen Vitiello's capture of light as sound, recordings of the northern lights or Alvin Lucier's installation of the sound a mammoth space in a thimble. Consider: a dark tunnel, mazes, parades, night walks, radio broadcasts directing drivers to a secret destination, a limo ride with sound art, a performance in silence. In different sound environments, listening has different possibilities. If the public can walk or ride under a bridge to hear a sound installation, that location becomes a listening place and an attraction. Another dimension is interactivity. Sound art can be like a weather sock, audibly connected to wind speed or other observable elements. This has potential for endless fascination. In public sound art, the content is designed both artistically and in terms of how long an average listener will remain on site. In museums, there are streakers, visitors and scholars, that is folks who blaze through, folks who get the basic experience and those who stay to study. In sound art installations, the same range is true, except that there tends to be longer listening times and repeat visits

SOUND AND MEMORY Memory and sound are bound at the hip if not the hippocampus. Sound occurs over time, so memory and listening work together, the mind understanding both the moment to moment sounds and the sonic experience from the first listen to the present moment, going back and forward in time. Sound is connected to its time of creation and source. whether an inter planetary wave or a ping from around you. The mind tries to calculate the location of the source in space in terms of its distance and motion relative to you. Also to identify the source. This is an involuntary and instant mix of perception, memory, calculation, identification and reaction/ Sound also invokes memories of experiences such as the instant recall of being in a place and the instant recognition of familiar voices. Sound is also connected to moment of each of our creation. Studies have shown that children remember sounds heard before birth. In that fetal stage we are experiencing vibrations, reacting to them and remembering them. When we are born, we leave the enveloped, aqueous prenatal environment to live and survive in air. We have a symmetrical pair of ears and a head with a face on one side. We can only see forward and laterally. Our ears do not blink. We hear physically and mentally in 3D because of our head and facial construction, which separates left and right, front and back, up and down. Memory adds the dimension of understanding over time. Memory connects the sound experience to other experiences and information in the memory bank. Sound space and memory space are connected through the brain's appetite for creating memory stages as a basis for memorization. Some say this the basis for ritual in ritual spaces and theatrical performances on stages. In the Greek rhetoric orators would memorize an ideal house with the same number of rooms as the parts of their speeches. One can walk through this memorized house and recall the speech by association. In Francis A. Yates "The Art of Memory", there is a correlation made between architectural shapes and the kinds of memories and experiences they support. Yates connects the old Greek principals of spaces to the scenography, such as Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Learning comes into the picture as the mind assembles memories, desires plans and strategies. Russian psychologist Aleksandr Luria in The Mind of the Mnemonist follows a memory artist through his career and explores his self stories and strategies for memorizing phone book pages and the like. Memory in traditional cultures is enhanced through the use of short melodies associated with prayers and stories. Such melodies help the listeners follow the long epic tales and complex ceremonies.

Memory is evoked by experiencing something from ones past, a song, a tiny flavor, an aroma, a voice. a visit with someone or someplace. There is as well the sense of remembering that which has never been known or experienced, as though the memory was coming from some other self or source. Memory plays a strong role in pattern and structure recognition, particularly in regard to repetition. A repeating loop of sound, a machine making on cycles set up one set of responses. A melodic phrase, a moment in a sound poem, a classical music theme, a character or place theme in a movie, take on meaning in larger experiences where there is an interplay between what is happening in the present and what is coming back processed from earlier in the work. There is as well anticipation of what is to come. In daily life, the mind focuses on the present, but in recollection and in experience of a sound works over time, the mind is performing on many integrated levels of memory, bouncing and connecting between the self and the work and the environment. Artists and designers consciously try to create memories. What sticks in the memory is both personal and cultural, affected like the Greek speech memorization by where you are in the moment, in the course of your life, the course of events and by the designed object or experience itself. Memory is interwoven with our sense of time: the connection with present time, the sense of entering other time zones and the navigation of time, where pasts and presents flow without boundaries. CLOCKS, ALARMS AND MONUMENTS Clocks and calendars mark the continuum of life with a system of reminders which are in many instances sonic. Church bells, sirens, alarms, door bells, ring tones, factory and railroad conductors whistles, calls to prayer, announcements are sonic attention grabbers keyed to memory. To be effective, you have to know what they are for! Jingles, sound logos and monuments contain within them the wish for the evocation of memory. They often shape the memory for a purpose.

SONIC SURVEILLANCE Sonic surveillance and the translocation of sound, in real-time and in replay, is intertwined with sound art since the narrative and forensic mix invisibly with the artistically provocative, narrative and evocative, that is the aesthetic. The work of Bill Fontana extensively explores listening points and translocating sound from one place to another.

Historically, there is a long tradition of listening points from which to surveill and survey. And as in the film, The Conversation, there are layers of intertwined information waiting to be teased apart by the mind and our filters: mechanical, electronic, perceptual and aesthetic. In public sound art. the tools of the past and present form the toolkit and palette. SOUND AND TIME Sound is audible time. Sound takes place over time and effects the perception of time. Sound devices and sound art mark time in their own way. In a highly intricate work, there is the immediate understanding of the labor folded into, all the time spent making it, the thought behind it, and the thoughts it stimulates. A steam clock reminds one of the past and the steam age. Water devices connect to water and vapor physically, aromatically and in the mood they create. Sound art can extend and effect the time visitors spend on a site. The show of Audubon water colors of birds with 3D bird sounds is of interest longer to visitors than with the same show without sound. Sound has the power to alter time. The story is told of initiation in a Tibetan order where after days of chanting, the initiate experiences a water spray in slow motion, with each particle of water moving slowly towards his eyes. After a night of Indian classical music or a listen to Wagners ring cycle, the mind is in a different place. There is time and mind altering power in listening to sound which can be felt, such as the vibrations of a train overpass, near church bells, a loud rock band or a military drum corps. The sound can be felt through out the body, much as in the womb or underwater. It is unstoppable, much like a light so bright it is seen through closed eyelids. Sound art and music are not afraid to venture into this territory of the overwhelming, transcendent and the ecstatic. It is not only the very loud that has power in sound. Sound at all sound pressure levels and silence are powerful in good architecture, sound art and music. Acclimation to sonic environment is a strong factor. Folks that live in noisy environments hear differently from folks who live in quiet places. We tune to the environment to which we are accustomed. It sets a base level for hearing acuity as well as for listening skills. Sound art in public space lives with the ambient sound levels. Wonderful sound installations have graced the subways and tunnels of urban and airport settings. They touch the ears and lives of those who pass through. The can make time pass nicely.

SOUND AND LIGHT Sound and light are made of vibrations at different frequencies. Sound color and light color are akin, some say only octaves apart, and throughout history have been worked in relationship to each other. For centuries, people have alchemically transformed sound to light and light to sound. All physical matter and energy is composed of vibration, and can release and absorb light and heat as it is transformed from state to state or in reactions. Sound in nature is associated with places and linked to times of day, times of year, times in lifetimes and times in eternity. Light defines every local in its own way. Sound and light are combined in life, in media, in performances and in installations. Sound and light can mark and define a place, sound being more evident in day and lighting taking on a greater role at night. Sound and light both have a relationship to old technologies, to electricity and to electronics because their generations are marked by the evolution of those technologies. In this way both sound and light can evoke the past and work to create atmosphere and memories. Memory and perception can be played in counterpoint. In contemporary architecture, sound and light are controlled and delivered in all designed spaces, indoors and out. TACTILE SOUND One receives sound through more pathways than the ear as discussed above in Visceral Sound. Tactile Sound is sound design for sonic experiences other than through the ears. Since a human being is almost 100% "ear" as a fetus, there is an evocative primordial effect of non-ear sound experiences. There are spontaneous and involuntary reactions to shrieks, low rumbles and thuds. They are often warnings of danger, volcanoes, earthquakes, avalanches, large animals, falling objects, large vehicles and objects. There also are subtle aspects of tactile sound. One listens with the finger tips, with every part of the body. There is a continuum between vibration, sound, heat and light. The intermedia effects are highly interesting and tools for design. In the days before sound capture, processing and reproduction, most sound was understood as tactile and visceral. The production of sound as experience in ritual, theater and music has created a broad area of apparently non-tactile sound. All sound is physical. Thus there is similarity between a pressure gauge, a loud speaker, and a microphone. All respond to sound and pressure changes.

Sound of different frequencies, mixtures and motions effect the body differently. Specialized low frequency drivers are used in experience designs. See http://www.clarksynthesis.com/whatis.php Sound art with a strong tactile component is available to the deaf as well as those with hearing. In both public and private settings, tactilely appreciate vibrations are intimate. SOUND CANCELLATION Noise cancellation and reduction can be quite successful using headphones with built in microphones. This process depends on controlling a location with opposing positive and negative sounds. The tiny area between a headphone and the ear is ideal. With installations of loud speakers, sound cancellation is difficult and easily goes wrong because every spot needs a mike and speaker, all in all a feedback nightmare. There are exceptions where waveguide construction favors the sound cancellation effect. A long narrow hallway can be designed with one or more sound cancellation zones.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/eng99/eng99353.htm

SOUND CONTEXT AND MASKING Sound masking is used to separate audio spaces. Water fountains and falls are traditional solutions. Electronically produced or reproduced sounds can do the masking. There is art to masking since one is using sound to eliminate sound. In events and installations, the use of subliminal and overt sound material can be effective. David Lynch uses slowed down sounds of dangerous animals in his mixes to create tension. The German signal corps kept a low hum on stadium sound and stopped it, creating a sense of well-being when Hitler began speaking. Sound art within the envelop of the prevailing ambiance can be powerful and evocative. Directing sound from a particular spot can focus listener attention on that spot in order to set up a surprise from elsewhere or a scene change. In the interplay between sound and image, sound and performance, moments of profound silence can be created. The unexpected, the unfamiliar and the unknowable can open up the mind which seeks to understand or to step back from understanding.

MANAGING AMBIANT NOISE AS A SOUND ART OPPORTUNITY There are more and more noisy spaces in this noisy world. As noisy places are developed for residential and mixed use, the question arises frequently on whether the cost of controlling the sound is manageable. Acoustician Neill Woodger of Arup suggests that noisy soundscapes offer opportunities to add sound art that blends with the noisy environmental sound to form interesting and even attractive mixtures. Given the abundance of noisy places, there is a future for thoughtful sound art solutions. 3D sound is particularly is effective in this solution because it is immersive exactly in the manner of normal life sounds and perceivable by the average person.

PERFORMANCE AND SOUND ART The border between performance and sound art is blurred and interesting. Performances use sound which come from bodies and musical instruments or objects. Installations can include and stimulate performances. Mechanisms like noise machines and robots are performing. Performers emulate machines. This is a healthy and fruitful interplay. In public sound art settings, performances bring other dimensions. One is reminded of a ceremony of the Iroquois Indians where one brings a bucket to the Longhouse and leaves with a soup that will eventually be part of the all the participants. Thus it is that performance, like a fresh soup, brings us together during and after it occurs. In some performance, small sound makers are given out and the entire audience can make a large sound in common.

SOUND AND LANGUAGE Human languages use patterns of sound and/or hand gesture for symbols. These sounds can be converted into written form with little loss of information. Gestures and intonation are a part of delivery, but are not conveyed in written form. Some invented human languages have been built entirely on visual cues to enable communication. Wikipedia Sound languages, signals, codes, gestures and musics are part of the vocabulary of sound art. Each provides a channel in what can be multichannel experience. Such channels connect and create community in each species. Communications between the species is as old as the natural world. Language and sound convey ideas, emotion, strategies and intentions. Audible or visible transactions connect observer to the observed. The palette of sound art is broad and can include natural sounds, natural settings, languages and signals, found and processed. Sound art in public spaces can employ content that tells stories, communicates directly with the public and makes fascination. LITERATURE AND POETRY OF SOUND There is a highly developed literature and poetry of sound. In Finland, a collection of listeners responses to sound art were collected from the radio audience of a popular sound art show. This is published in a book which immediately sold out its edition. The project not only won a prize, it won a place in the hearts of the public who were asked to share their responses in publication. Some categories of text are: - sound poetry, text sound - poetry and literature with and about sound experiences - instructions for listening - descriptions of sound All literature contains both sound and sonic images. Poetry is often in pubic art as text and as readings. The inclusion of sound and text in a public installation has been quite popular internationally.

SOUND ART AND SOCIAL INTERACTION Sound art in public places is social architecture. Communities need to be involved planning of sound installations. What time is sound heard? What sound level? What content is appropriate. If a sound installation is loud, there will be community reaction. Sound art in pubic places is very public and since tastes in sound and music vary, the usual mixed population near a sound art work will be vocal. This offers an opportunity to build relationships with many different factions in the community. However, since art is not necessarily created in a participatory fashion, there can be conflict between the artist's intensions and the community. The best solution is to communicate so that at minimum the artists intensions are clear, and the pubic knows what it is experiencing. That is not a total solution, since one of the roles of the artist is to be provocative. Not all art is suitable for public installation. BIO-ORCHESTRATION - IN NATURE AND IN NEW CONTRUCTIONS Bio-orchestration is my term for the ordering of species of life forms for their sonic and aesthetic properties. It is not a simple matter. Aviaries and zoos, parks, wild life sanctuaries, interior and outdoor public spaces, private properties and homes all engage in some form of bio-orchestration. "In his book Dwellers of the Land: The Bioregional Vision, Kirkpatrick Sale, explains that the nature of Bioregionalism implies an understanding of the land, its geographical features, resource inventory and carrying capacity as a self-reliant, human and wild habitat. The Bioregional vision requires a serious historical and anthropological exploration of the ways and wisdom of earlier cultures. Sale reminds us of the words of his mentor, E.F. Schumacher, who once said that "We have discarded the two great teachers of humanity: the marvelous system of living nature and the traditional wisdom of mankind".
Phil Ferraro, Director Institute for Bioregional Studies 449 University Avenue Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island Canada C1A 8K3 (902) 892-9578) Developing Local Solutions to Global Problems.

My colleague, ornithologist Jack Bradbury, wrote me "I am not at all clear what you mean by your bio-orchestration project. Do you mean attracting wild birds into some site for an exhibit using playbacks

or reconstruction of natural biological communities? It sounds interesting, but I am not sure what you intend here. Send more details when you get a chance." Jack, your question is a good one. I was thinking of both attracting and repelling wild birds around an exhibit and reconstruction of natural biological communities. Jack replied "First, there is considerable concern these days about people using unnecessary playbacks to wild birds. Some birders routinely go out every weekend and use playbacks to get birds where they can see them and tick them off on their life lists. There are not a lot of data, but what there is suggests that enough people doing this can perturb natural populations. So you may want to think about what species you would manipulate, and what the long term effects might be ecologically. "Second, and sort of on the other side, the use of sound playbacks to discourage pest bird species has not racked up a very good record. Where it does work, it is often only initially and then the birds habituate and ignore subsequent playbacks (gulls, woodpeckers, etc.). "I think it is one thing to bring nature inside and recreate it for people, and another to make yourself part of the biological community. The latter has a way of upsetting things and you want to think long and hard before you embark on this approach." Some creatures imitate human sounds. In a recent outdoor installation featuring fragments of the music of Xenakis at the Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark, in a month there were birds making sounds. And in yet another view, Simone Forti's Jackdaw Songs uses spoken language with the structure and attitude of the Jackdaw, which sings sequences of all kinds of vocabulary for fun in a litany of non sequiturs. The sonic transactions of animal communication offer both a window into other species behavior and an opportunity for new forms. As well, sound can bridge the space between the sleeping and waking, the prenatal and the born, and between species. Life on the planet involves stewardship. With all possible thoughtfulness, we must make efforts to restore ecologies and to make thoughtful agricultural and landscape decisions about populating with vegetation and sound making creatures for whom that vegetation is habitat. I see this as a danger and an opportunity, but since so much of the world is man made, the solutions for a manmade world need be found.

THE ANIMATION OF PUBLIC SPACES - PERFORMANCES, EVENTS One major role of sound and sound art is the animation of public spaces. Playing classical music in train stations to create an anti beatbox population is one odd example. Annual festivals create destinations, such as New Orleans Jazz Festival and Tanglewood. Cathedrals, public market places and performances have long attracted gatherings. Site specific events and performances are tied in with the design of multipurpose spaces. Public art works with sound systems can be repurposed to support parties and in some instances an open architecture for new sound works plus what was originally installed. Good signage and communication about the content of public works is one strategy. On the other hand, the discovery of unmarked works lends a pleasant ambiguity between the constructed and the found. The integration of the sound art works in public settings is best accomplished when they are planned and installed with the help of architects who have the larger issues of the area in minds as well as access to solutions perhaps unknown to the artist. These include specification of master plan, power, access, maintenance, safety and visitor circulation. Maintenance plans are a must. One changes light bulbs in public spaces and so any Sound art installation must be monitored regularly by caretakers of the public space. As well, it can make sense to maintain a telephone link to a monitoring station and a call-in number for the public posted visibly. Taking care of sound art installations is not difficult, just something to expect as part of operations. The master plan of a sound art installation area is critical so that the intensions of many artists can be respected and reflected in thoughtful sound zone planning. Acousticians has the tools to accomplish site studies and analyses. The skillful use of sound from many different areas can be managed by anticipating sound spill and controlling unwanted sounds. Acoustical studies and sound bubble drawings are very help ways to maximize the balance and power of a public sound art project. Sound art should be integrated into the architectural and landscape process to shape the sonic environment, directing the visitors perception of scale, balance and intimacy. Sonic environment design includes portals and transitions between environments. These transitions are dynamic by their very nature of changing perception step by step. One test of a sonic design is its effectiveness for a blind or blind folded person. Sound can mark the paths and portals of gardens and parks, from pavers and path surfaces to key locations sonified to identify themselves, much as bell buoys and foghorns sonify harbors. Sound art in public spaces provides a narrative that unfolds as visitors follow their ears and experience journeys enriched by sonic milestones, episodes and changes. An exceptional sound work can attract attendance. It can transform the feeling and meaning of a site. _________________________________________________________