For the 3 days of drift (Friday 12th / Saturday 13th / Sunday 14th) in collaboration with St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art we present a very special Sound Installation within The Museums Zen Garden.

Greg Wagstaff
"even the birds..." / Confluence.

Visitors will enter the Zen Garden to the subtle sounds of highland streams and spoken Haiku. A meandering line of 6 speakers are placed through the garden. Through these are heard six distinctly different sounds of streams, fluctuating in dynamic, pitch and overtones. Occasionally, three lines of Haiku will be heard from a seventh speaker on the perimeter of the garden. This soundscape is always in change and continuous, it is gentle, amplified no more than one would hear naturally.

My work has its roots in the experimental tradition. It frequently utilizes new technology to compose and exhibit audio and visual elements. Recent installations have used chance and indeterminate processes respectively to compose various parameters of their audio and/or visual makeup

I have found this way of working concentrates the mind on the inherent nature of the chosen material, and more and more I find myself facilitating very simple sources, allowing them to enter into unfolding relationships with each other. These 'sources' are often environmental, and commonly acoustical. I find sound more agreeable as an artistic material due to its very nature; its ephemerality, its multiplicity, its ability to occupy and define spaces, and its protean behavior. The visual is becoming increasingly subordinate in my approach.

My research has become more closely involved with the ideas of Acoustic Ecology. These ideas, along with those of John Cage which remain a primary influence, have resulted in my employment of 'responsive sound environments'. This is a space whose acoustic design is modified by changes which take place within, or even exterior, to that space; various sensing devices and causal processes determine the real-time composition of the wor. In brief, my intentions are now focused on an art that generates a greater awareness and appreciation of one's surroundings, in particular through the act of listening .