UB's Fluid Culture Series to Offer "Tactical Sound Garden" This Weekend

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Fluid Culture Series presented by the University at Buffalo Humanities Institute -- the folks who floated a fully made bed in the Commercial Slip last fall -- will mount a downtown "Tactical Sound Garden" designed by Mark Shepard, associate professor of architecture and media study.

The downtown waterfront "garden" will be open at 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, May 4-5. Those who wish to participate should bring an Android mobile phone to the Buffalo Waterfront Canal Side pedestrian bridge at the entrance to the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park.

All Fluid Culture events are free and open to the public and everyone is welcome.

The Tactical Sound Garden (TSG) is an open source software platform used to cultivate public "sound gardens" in contemporary cities. Drawing on the culture of urban community gardening, it offers a participatory environment to explore social interaction within a technologically mediated space.

Using a mobile phone running TSG software, participants will "plant" sounds at spots within an audio environment situated along the Buffalo waterfront. These sounds were produced by local sound artists at a workshop held this spring at Squeaky Wheel Media Arts Center.

These "plantings" are mapped onto the coordinates of a specified urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a TSG-enabled device, participants will drift though virtual sound gardens as they move through that space, listening, altering ("pruning") or "planting" new sounds of their own selection.