By Gustavo Matamoros, the Listening Gallery

After a successful run of newly commissioned installations by sound artists like Russell Frehling, David Dunn and Rene Barge, as well as sound art works by Tom Hamilton and Frozen Music, it is now time to turn the attention of the Listening Gallery to a series of experiments I’m calling Glade(s)cape. Through the summer I will be showcasing random instances of tunings and acoustical gestures derived from daily site experiments that combine elements of South Florida’s sound ecology with deeper explorations of the nature of the gallery’s surroundings and its unique sound system.

To generate some of the sounds you now hear, it was necessary to first scan the Listening Gallery site for resonance.  This was achieved using a radio microphone attached to the end of a pole — a process I call “fishing for resonance”.  Here is how it works. The microphone is connected to the speakers under the awning and the amplifiers are set to a level at the threshold of feedback.  Slowly changing the position of the microphone to scan the area causes the system to generate tones of frequencies that are equivalent to particular resonances at the microphone’s location.  At the Listening Gallery site I found 264 frequencies which I have listed in the accompanying score.  Some of the frequencies are harmonics of a fundamental tone from which interesting timbres can be created.  Others are not. So when they appear, they interact with present tones in polyphonic ways.  But when you stand at a particular location and hear a tone, the experience becomes physical and three-dimensional.

There is a certain challenge in the task of exciting resonance in an uncontrolled outdoor environment like the one surrounding the Listening Gallery — where the speakers are lining the building all in a row and turn the corner radiating sound outward in a convex manner.  Glade(s)cape will evolve until an ultimate tuning of the space is achieved as we prepare the next exhibit for September.

These experiments have already lead to pleasant discoveries. I’ll share one with you now. While installing the current version of Glade(s)cape, a pigeon landed on a beam under the awning where she stayed for about 20 minutes, cooing in perfect unison with one of the tones in the installation.  One of now hundreds of magical moments I have experienced throughout this Listening Gallery journey.