Garden Week: A Sound Garden
4/21/202616 min
An orchard of metal poles sits on a hill overlooking Lake Washington. And when the wind blows, this musical sculpture "sings the world into existence" with its unique sound.
This week, we’re celebrating the arrival of spring with new and classic stories about unusual gardens around the world.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSarah Wyman· Host0:00
[wind blowing] Do you hear that? That's a Sound Garden. It's a sculpture here in Seattle at the Western Regional Center for NOAA. That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And at first glance, this sculpture does look kind of like a piece of weather forecasting equipment. It's made up of 12 tall steel structures planted in a group, and at the top of each pole, about 20 feet up in the air, there's a sleek, metallic fin. It works like a wind vane, so as a breeze blows through this orchard of metal poles, the tops all turn to face it. On each sculpture, there's a steel flute that's taller than I am hanging perpendicular to the ground. The sculptures release this halo of sound that hangs like a dome over the top of the hill they're standing on, overlooking Lake Washington.
Doug Hollis· Guest1:03
So in a way, Sound Garden is kind of a soundtrack to the lake, too.
Sarah Wyman· Host1:08
Doug Hollis is the guy who built these structures. What do we call your work? Art or science or architecture?
Doug Hollis· Guest1:17
[laughs] People call it a lot of things. [laughs] Um, [laughs] the broad term I use is environmental sculpture.
Sarah Wyman· Host1:23
Today, we're gonna spend some time in this blurry art/science/music