Of Earth and Sun: Generative Soundscape Composition and Biophilic Design

Abstract:

Despite well-documented benefits experienced by communities and individuals with easy access and direct exposure to nature, many individuals spend a majority of their working hours indoors. The field of sustainable design has tackled this issue through biophilic design, which strives to elicit a positive, valued experience of nature in the human built environment.

But although biophilic design principles are increasingly employed within the visual domain, auditory applications of these principles are underutilized and underexplored. This talk will examine sonic approaches to biophilic design in the generative soundscape installation "Of Earth and Sun."

In 2013, the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh commissioned "Of Earth and Sun," a permanent sound installation for the public atrium of the Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL). This project is part of its Biophilia Enhanced Through Art initiative, which uses art to remind people about nature’s beauty and the connections between humans and the natural world.

"Of Earth and Sun" is a dynamic sound installation that evolves throughout the day and with the seasons. The systems at the CSL respond to environmental input in order to reduce its ecological footprint. Similarly, "Of Earth and Sun" uses data from the CSL’s on-site weather station to dynamically control the sounds and processes that will create the installation. Sounds and soundscapes gathered from throughout the Pittsburgh region are stored in a local database, processed, and played back through transducers placed on windows throughout the CSL’s atrium.

Abby Aresty is installing the fourth and final iteration of this project in January 2017. In her presentation, she will describe the project goals, processes and outcomes of the various project iterations. She will also examine listener experience and propose models for enhancing listener engagement in soundscape composition

Bio: 

Dr. Abby Aresty is a composer and sound artist who uses technology to facilitate unexpected interactions between people, the built environment, and the natural world. Aresty’s work is rooted in the fields of acoustic ecology, sound art and electroacoustic composition, and has included concert works, public sound installations, soundwalks, pop-up galleries, multimedia collaborations, biofeedback interfaces and sound sculptures, including prosthetic listening devices. Themes that permeate her creative work include mindfulness, personal well-being, and community and environmental health. Aresty’s research also explores the juxtaposition of noise and nature, technology and humanity, and the liminal spaces these juxtapositions create.  Within these frameworks, listening has taken a central role in Aresty’s research; her projects are playful, meditative listening interventions that seek to provoke audience reflection on habitual listening practices in contemporary sonic environments. 

Aresty’s site-specific installations have been featured in local and national news outlets; "Paths II: The Music of Trees," a temporary installation in Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum, was featured in an interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s "All Things Considered" and was hailed as "otherworldly" and "sometimes eerie, sometimes transportingly lovely" by the Seattle Times. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured Aresty’s ongoing project, "Of Earth and Sun," a permanent, site-specific sound installation commissioned by the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens for the public atrium of the Center for Sustainable Landscapes. Aresty has presented her research nationally and internationally, in conferences including Balance/Unbalance 2015 in Tempe, the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Hong Kong in May 2016, and Sonic Environments in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2016. Aresty engages the communities in which she lives and works through soundwalks, public lectures and participatory events such as her collaborative project, The Listening Laboratory and Spa (LLaS). The LLaS is a participatory pop-up gallery designed to facilitate playful interactions across a broad range of listening modes, reflecting the multifarious roles machines play in contemporary listening practices.

Aresty received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Washington in 2012. From 2013-2014, Aresty was a Fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, and from 2014-2016, she held the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Electronic Music and Sound Studies at Grinnell College. Aresty taught at each of these institutions, including courses in music theory and musicianship at the University of Washington, a course in sound art at Carnegie Mellon University, and courses in sound art and electronic music at Grinnell College. In 2016, Aresty is joining the Acoustic Ecology Lab at Arizona State University as a postdoctoral scholar.