Tall pipes hanging vertically, approximately three feet apart from each other, spread over a circular platform. They resemble a dense pipe forest. The circular platform has an entrance and a cord hanging next to it.

You pull the cord and the pipes sound like bells with very low tones: They invite you to enter the platform. In entering the platform, you hear the combined sound of all pipes. As you walk through the pipe forest some tones (those of the nearest pipes) become more apparent, waxing and waning into slow melodies as you move around.

The tones are very low, much lower than any musical instrument. And if you pay attention, you can feel their vibrations—the sensation is eerie and exhilarating. The sound lasts for a long time, about two minutes, fading slowly.

As the sound fades, you bring your ear closer to the pipes, hearing their whispers as they slowly disappear, and you wonder if you can still hear them or the sound is only resonating in your imagination.

Music deconstructed Traditional music practice often divides us between skilled performers creating sound from a stage and laypeople receiving sound in the audience. This piece subverts that relationship, inviting the participants to organize the sound as they move through the forest, guided by their curiosity and by their natural impulse to explore, creating the music with their paths and their ears. The music does not emerge from a stage but from all directions of the forest in which the participant is embedded. The forest invites the participant to the unusual experience of listening hard, intently, perhaps allowing them to take the experience home.

Sound curious

Because the experience is so unique, the sound forest stimulates curiosity about sound and vibrations. Why do I feel these vibrations? Why do larger pipes sound deeper? Why do they seem to vibrate more? And why does the sound last for so long? The forest invites the participants to the unusual experience of listening hard, intently, perhaps allowing them to take the experience home.