The Listening Tree is a tree-like sculpture comprised of various lengths and diameters of hollow polished stainless steel tubes, located at the entrance to St. Luke's Park in Ottawa, Ontario.
Standing fifteen feet tall, with branches that reach out over the entrance pathway, it welcomes visitors to the park and complements the existing tree canopy, helping to frame the main park view.
Certain tubes, slotted and closed on both ends, channel the wind at varying times, creating a series of shifting tones. The remaining open tubes respond uniquely to the surrounding urban soundscape (based on length and diameter) by reinforcing different portions of the ambient overtone spectrum.
Making Waves consists of a series of equilateral prisms mounted on opposite ends of stainless steel rods, spaced equally along a sixteen foot long wooden base and connected to a central tensioned band.
Pushing down or pulling up on any of the prisms causes resultant waveforms to transpire along the length of the piece.
At night, coloured light passes through the prisms and is refracted and projected onto the surrounding environment, creating a dynamic interplay of light and motion.
During the day, the prisms shimmer with rainbow tones as they refract natural light.
Erratic Grass is a kinetic sound sculpture consisting of 150 aluminum rods with stones affixed to their ends. Visually, the piece references the form of ornamental grasses.
The stones, which were sourced from the area surrounding where the piece is situated, are erratics, left behind when the glaciers retreated, and vary in type, shape, and weight, with heavier stones causing the rods on which they are mounted to bend further down.
When the rods are disturbed by natural forces (such as wind) or by the hands of visitors, they are set into motion, producing sound as the rods and stones contact and rub against one another.
The term "erratic" in the piece's title refers to both the nature of the movement of the piece as well as the stones used in its creation.
Originally commissioned for the Fieldwork festival in Maberly, Ontario, Erratic Grass is now situated within the Canadensis Gardens in Ottawa.
Row by Row consists of twenty-five canoe paddles, suspended above the ground in the space between two large trees, and connected together by a series of three tensioned cables.
The cables together form a torsional spine that facilitates transference of motion energy from paddle to paddle resulting in wave forms (in similar fashion to Making Waves) when the piece is activated, either by wind or the hands of visitors. The wave motion of the paddles references the oscillatory patterns of rowing, as from a canoe.
The title references the piece’s positioning as a row of canoe paddles adjacent to a row of cedars, as well as traditional planting methods, providing both a link to the Canadensis Gardens in Ottawa where it is situated, as well as agricultural practices more broadly.
The cedar row acts as both a windbreak (from the open adjacent field) and a visual backdrop to the piece, with its patterns of vertical lines reflected in the arrangement of the paddles.
