The App
Welcome to Spatial Garden, an on-location musical journey through the history of DC's Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in advance of its biggest renovation in 30 years, out now on iOS and Android.Spatial Garden explores five time periods of historic significance for the garden, using historical blueprints, text and sounds applicable to each time period--all scored with spatial music concepts by Washington, D.C. duo TCW. The app now also features historical photos from the Smithsonian Archives and Ezra Stoller collections, as well as two sonified historical speeches from the groundbreaking ceremony!
Music for each time period (1967, 1974, 1981, Today, the Future) was composed using era-specific textures, styles and instruments; the music is accompanied in each scene by spatially-triggered facts about the Garden's history. You can learn more about the compositional process in our 15-minute talk from the SoundScene: Emerge festival, available on Facebook (our part begins at 48:30).
Spatial music is an emerging way to compose music, using not just time but the physical space around you as a compositional framework. Walk through chords, find different harmonies, or just sit and wait for sounds to change around you. You can learn more about spatial composition, find free how-to guides, and find more GPS-based and AR-based works on the TCW website.
In Use
By default, the scenes will change every 100 seconds automatically. Hit the "PAUSE" button to stay in any specific year, or hit the Scene Select button (the three horizontal lines in the circle) to jump to any year you would like to at any time.
Headphones provide the proper experience.
Troubleshooting
- If you are seeing a blue screen or background, particularly on Android, please restart the app one time. This is a known issue with Android location permissions.
-If the music sounds choppy, your device may not have enough processing power to run the app well. Your best bet is to turn off your WiFi.
-If you are not seeing or hearing anything, please remember you must be physically on-site at the Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden to experience the app.
Stay up to date with infrequent (no more than 4/year) e-mails here
Contact us: tcw@tcwav.com.
Contact us: tcw@tcwav.com.
Sonic MC Brien; Vector Manne-Marie