Sonic Babylon

What does a sound garden sound like? Nora and I have been giving that question a lot of thought recently as we get Sonic Babylon ready for Australia. We're creating a taxonomy of sounds for the ground cover, and imagining the different atmospheres that will arise from various combinations of the categories. We're also thinking about how the ambience of a garden might transform, momentarily or permanently, by shifting the plantings more from one area of the taxonomy than another.

The categories we're working with are Environmental, Urban, Indigenous, Spoken, and Song. But is Heritage a better term than Indigenous, or Music a more inclusive term than Song? Whatever the final nomenclature, our plan is to assemble compatible groups of ground cover sounds, some more equally distributed throughout the taxonomy than others. Not all sounds will be used at once, of course. A sound garden resembles an octet more than it does a symphony of thousands. Rather, unplanted sounds become a database from which visitors to the garden draw. It's this abundance of sounds, rich in their differences, that allows the sound of a garden to transform over time.