BENGALURU:Have you ever been to a museum or a garden and wanted to get close and touch various things? Have you left feeling disappointed when those signs reading ‘Do Not Touch’ stare at you from every corner? Bengalureans are in for a treat, as this is one of the aspects that make the recently launched Sound Garden different from the rest.
This new ‘interactive’ garden, called the Sound Garden, is a flagship project by the Indian Music Experience (IME) in collaboration with the Brigade Group. Open to the public since July 29, Sound Garden occupies one-fourth of the 50,000 square-foot area in JP Nagar’s seventh phase.
The first day of the launch saw an overwhelming crowd, according to Dr Suma Sudhindra, the director of the outreach line at The Centre for Indian Music Experience. The project was conceptualized nine years back, and after years of research and experiments, the launch finally happened on Saturday. With a lot more work to be done, the latter half of 2017 will see the launch of the centre in its entirety.
Twelve kinds of interactive instruments, including chimes, gongs, bells and reeds, are installed in the garden. “The twelve instruments denote twelve different notes,” says Dr Suma. All twelve instruments are set to different notes and pitch, she adds.
With the cafeteria in the centre, you have to go a full circle to play all the instruments. Starting from the left, there is a metal instrument called the Sound Strip, where you run your hands along the railing to produce subtle chimes as the rubber hits the steel.
Four xylophones like instruments, called the Sound Table, gathered quite a few people. Each table, with a set of two mallet drum sticks, can be tapped on four different surfaces such as brass, wood, aluminum and stone. All sounds produced are of different notes - C,D,G and F.
One of the major attractions, however, is a singing stone called the Sound Stone that states that even stones can create music through vibration, a literal rock music. Wet hands are to be massaged on blunt granite rocks that have vertical stripped hollows, and the friction generates a mild humming sound.
The Tubular Bells are the best instrument to feel the music as you tap the seven bells around you while you’re inside the walls, which looks more like lotus petals. A gentle progression of scales are not only heard, but also experienced as you keep turning round and round while tapping.
Adjacent to the Tubular Bells but opposite in concept, is an instrument called Bell Plates, which is known to produce a ‘flower of a sound’, as it looks like a blooming flower and the petals are to be tapped with a mallet
The idea is to make music accessible to all, which is also why entry is free for everyone. Designed by SVARAM Musical Instruments and Research in Auroville, Pondicherry, and Foley Designs, a month of experimentation was done before the launch.
“Anybody who loves music can come to the garden to touch, feel and play music,” says Suma. “I thought only children would be interested, but it is good to see elders having just as much fun,” she smiles.
Besides the launch, a festival with live music, dance performaces and other on-stage programmes were conducted. The entry to the festival had buttons to be dropped in the drop box in accordance with age and gender. “Instead of the boring registration book, we thought of dropping different coloured buttons in the box because that would enable us to understand our audience,” says Tejshvi Jain, who runs a Rereeti Foundation that aims to make museums and heritage sites appealing destinations in order to cultivate audience engagement. Tejshvi is currently in partnership with Indian Music Experience.