research at play

My time is increasingly spent thinking about sound.
Apart from my day job (see first entry) and my night/weekend job (see second entry), I also get to think about how sound intersects with play.
My first playground sound installation at Wombat Bend playspace, at Finns Reserve in Templestowe, was a kind of beta-testing for this thinking. There are two arrangements of two-channel speaker sets installed onsite, one set in a 'wilderness' planting on the playfround periphery, the second within a maze.
As someone with an interest in acoustic ecology, I am concerned that electronic sound invades all aspects of childrens' lives as it is, so I was dubious about inserting it into playgrounds as well. However, by embedding the soundscape into the landscape features (one speaker is a possum box, another a log) and having locally recorded birdsong in mostly contextually-appropriate arrangements (except for the chicken that somehow ended up in the tree) this soundscape enhances rather than anaesthetises. In a different way, the interactive installation in the maze creates a community of sound which the kids trigger through touch panels. The recordings were taken with kids from local primary schools who were encouraged to improvise, sing, and fart with abandon. Many of the sounds are simple, genuine, contagious giggling.
The designer of the playground, Ric McConaghy, has asked me to work with him on upcoming playgrounds. I hope that the ideas that are starting to seed in my mind about sound design and public place - allowing space for spontaneity and avoiding the trap of overdetermination so common to contemporary urban design - will flower in these upcoming projects.