Harewood House (Leeds, UK), Kunstlerhaus Boswil (Switzerland), The Charterhouse Gardens for Barbican Sound Unbound (London, UK), Salters’ Yard Garden for Play the Mile (London, UK), Felbrigg Hall for Norfolk and Norwich Festival (UK), Vaucluse House for Sydney Festival (Australia), Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne (Australia), Lambley Gardens (Ascot, Victoria, Australia).
Pleasure Garden is a listening garden.
Visitors of all ages and backgrounds are enveloped by gentle sounds as they wander through the natural architecture of a garden, or sit a while and listen. Pleasure Garden fuses music, field recordings and technology to create a contemplative environmental experience.
Pleasure Garden encourages attentiveness. Its meditative music attunes people to details of life cycles that often go unnoticed. Resonances emanate from plants. Birdsong and insect hum feel unusually present as the garden and its visitors are wreathed in subtle sound. Pleasure Garden intensifies an appreciation of gardens as places of discovery and delight.
Musically, it’s delicate, meticulously balanced to each place it visits, so that the sounds of the local habitat play a central role. The composition is spacious, blurring the lines between its own melodies and the surrounding ambiance. Some layers of Pleasure Garden’s composition are only triggered by movement, and float quietly across the space as visitors explore.
Jane Davidson and the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Australia Council for the Arts, Fiona Winning, Lieven Bertels and Sydney Festival, Ed Champion and staff at Vaucluse House, Sydney Living Museums, Criss Canning and David Glenn of Lambley Garden, Malgosia Fiebig, City Carillonneur of Utrecht, Toby Chadd and ABC Classics, Sheena Boughen and the Four Winds community, Music Norway, Lou Oppenheim and Circus Oz, Henk Heuvelmans and Martijn Buser of Gaudeamus, Graham Pushee and Arts Management, Martel Ollerenshaw, Atticus Bastow, Nick Roux, Ann Lacey, Francine Tanner, Jude Gun, Steven Richardson, Nicole Newman, Fiona Blair, Damon Young, Pat Hockey, Greg Lyons, Adam Gibson, Joseph Browning, Madeleine Flynn, Tim Humphrey, APAM, Kara Ward, Emer Harrington, Catherine Ashton, Mark Lowrey, Lillian Desormeaux, Adele Conlin and Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, William Strode, Daniel Brine, Mark Denbigh and the team at Norfolk and Norwich Festival, Paul Forecast, Alastair Bradshaw, Tina Hammond and all at Felbrigg Hall, Suzie Curtis, Kate Robinson, Huw Humphries, Paul Keene, Sarah Hickling, Miko Malkowski and all at The Charterhouse and The Barbican, Tim Bifield, Anna Casey, Rachel Smith, Rebecca Driver, Sheila Pott and all at Salters' Yard, Michael Schneider, Patrick Schellenberg and all at Boswil, Jane Marriott, Nicola Stephenson, Trevor Nicholson and the team at Harewood.