Norbert Herber describes his 2007 ArtsWeek project as an “asynchronous improvisation” and a “telematic environment.” Visitors to his musical installation may simply call it a close encounter of the sonic kind.

In keeping with the ArtsWeek 2007 theme of “Technology and the Arts,” Herber, a composer, saxophonist, and self-described “sound artist,” has created Sound Garden , an interactive work focused on music and creativity. Situated in a hallway of Indiana University's Radio-TV Building in Bloomington, Sound Garden is a continuous work of sound, noise, music, and silence, open to the public over the 10 days of ArtsWeek (Feb 21-March 3). Visitors will be immersed in unique “sonic events,” and using various computers and software programs, they can collaborate in the ongoing creation of Herber's piece by contributing their own audio files (music, voice, etc.) to the “garden.”

Just as plant gardeners put down seeds, water, fertilize, weed, and prune, Sound Garden listeners are prompted to “tend to their sonic environment and take an active role in its care,” Herber says. “Listeners can become gardeners who shape the overall sonic landscape.”

Enabling anyone and everyone to contribute to an interactive musical composition could lead straight to cacophony, but Herber contends that the principle of “self-organization” will take over. “In improvised music, self-organization is the phenomenon that accounts for the uncanny musical dialogue heard between musicians,” he explains. Herber expects that, like improvising musicians and like gardeners collaborating on a community plot, visitors to the Sound Garden “will act with sensitivity in response to the music ecology created by this work. It will be exhilarating to hear what people have created after the work has been ‘planted' for several days.”

Norbert is a lecturer in the Department of Telecommunications at IU Bloomington. His current works can be heard online at www.x-tet.com . The Sound Garden will be open at the Radio-TV building from February 21 through March 3. It will also be available online during that time at http://www.x-tet.com/soundgarden.

For more on the many events scheduled during ArtsWeek 2007, go to www.artsweek.indiana.edu .