Miniature Gardens:
an adapted work for Childhood
Sound and interactive Installation with musical performances for early childhood
This variation of the “Garden of Sensations” was created especially for children and impeded people with little live artistic and immersive experience.
The experience presented to younger audiences mixes touch with music and vibrations and lets children, and those with little exposure to art, discover and appreciate an original art work.
The installation is made up of 4 modules: Soundbox, Sound Slippers, Dream Pillows and Singing umbrellas.
This installation gives hearing-impaired audiences the chance to experience music through feeling vibrations, or neurologically-impaired people that to experience music by feeling air being blown, making it possible for them to share in an artistic experience that before may have been out of bounds. Miniature Gardens creates a poetical, musical and playful approach to experiencing one’s environment, offering a space for exploring sensation.
Associated with original sounds, these sensations create a link with our own nature by evoking dreamy gardens. By presenting the audience with multiple entries for perceiving artistic work, Miniature Gardens creates an atmosphere conducive to turning within, rediscovering sensations for some, opening to the world for others.
Musical Concept: The artist reused the real /virtual score concept of the “Garden of Sensations”.
Plastic Concept: Rather than diverting objects, the installation uses new creative modules as vehicles for a poetical and sensitive world.
Musiacl piece, one-man flute. Parc floral of Paris, August 2014
Musical piece, percussions. Festival 1,9,3 Soleil, May 2015
Musical route. Abbeville, Carmel d'Abbeville. April 2014
Musical piece and interactive installation. Festival Détours de Babel. Grenoble, May 2016
Musical route. Beauvais, ASCA, february 2016
A Musical Guided Tour :
The audience is then taken on a musical tour led by a musician and a guide. The musician “opens” each of several sound modules with a corresponding musical piece. The “guide” inspires the public to interact with the module. From module to module, he offers his musical interpretation of each sound world presented in the installation.
A 3-PART WORK
Listening to Musical Pieces :
The performance opens with a piece of music played by one or several musicians during 5 minutes. The audience is invited to dive into that particular sound universe. Following the Guided Tour part, a second piece is played as a conclusion of the whole performance, also for 5 minutes.
Audience Interaction :
At the end of the guided tour, the audience is left to freely experiment with each module’s materials, triggering schemes and soundscape at one’s own pace and inclination, in a leisurely stroll inspired by music and curiosity.
Duration: 30 minutes
Audience playtime: 20 minutes
Capacity: 25 people max.
Design, Music and execution : Alexandre Lévy
Design, installation : Sophie Lecomte
Stage props and lights : Jean-Louis Esclapès
Computarized musical programming : Alexandre Augier
Musicians :
Arthur Lévy, flute
Laurence Chave, percussions
Samuel Bricault, flute
Joint aKousthea production made in cooperation with the Sequenza agencie
– Festival Classique au vert 2014, en collaboration avec la MAS
– La Clé des Champs, Champs sur Marne.
And the financial support from the French ministry of Culture through DRAC Île de France, du CG de Seine et Marne.
Singing Umbrellas
This installation takes you into a garden where you are invited to touch plants, that in turn trigger sound sensations.
Three interactive umbrellas are suspended above the public. Vines hang from each umbrella. Movements from the audience trigger sounds reminiscent of vegetation within nature.
Original musical creation: A light and floating sound cloud swaddles the three umbrellas. Each stir of a vine causes participants to experience shivering sounds. These include: biting, reactive, chewing sounds, mouth sounds, crackling twigs, etc.
SOUND SLIPPERS
Here we have a collection of vegetal slippers to explore, which evoke a sweetness reminiscent of home.
Each slipper is connected to a rug. Each one contains vegetal matter which can be felt by both feet and toes. Moving the toes causes various soundscapes to be played.
Soundbox
Mixed mineral and vegetal matter is placed in our “Soundbox.”
Original musical creation: aquatic and far-away worlds are evoked; the sound world within the soundbox is made up of two complementary elements. Brushing up against the inner sides of the box sets off water sounds. And the movement of participants causes brief sound bits of sliding, flowing, flute-like effects to be generated, which are extracted from the real score previously played by the musician.
Dream Pillows
The installation is made up of 3 interactive pillows. The process starts whenever one lays one’s head on a pillow: this triggers sound bits from the musical performance heard in part 1 of the experience; the pillow also lights up.
The sound universe of the 3 pillows revolves around breathing and lighting rhythms, which transport the participants to a relaxing and contemplative space.
These 3 sets of musical content complement and interweave. This installation is all about polyphony and its variations.
The 4 modules of the interactive and sound installation :
Soundbox,
Sound Slippers,
dream Pillows
and Singing Umbrellas.
Original musical creation: The eight soundscapes are made up of real sound takes recorded in nature and assembled to become a poetic whole. Each toe movement adds or subtracts elements being played within the sound world.