Contradictory Garden

Audio Soundscape: 9 minutes

Produced 2001 - Minski Media

‘The Contradictory Garden’. It is a realistic representation of a soundscape description provided by an earwitness living in an isolated forest and travelling to work during the day into a city to work at a printery. The project is in three parts;

Part A: is early morning at home in the forest.

Part B: is travelling into a city for work at a printing factory during the day.

Part C: is returning home to the tranquil environment late afternoon/evening.

Essentially this soundscape representation is the contrast between the natural (from nature) and the artificial (human made) sound environments. In his book ‘The Soundscape’ Murray Schaffer (1977, Chapter 12) suggests that in modern day aesthetics the natural soundscape is one producing ‘sound romantics’ and the industrial/technological soundscape is producing sound undesirables. This will be the main focus of the presentation.

Schaffer, M. 1977, The Tuning of the World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.