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My expertise in is an artform I call Total Soundspace Design. That means all aspects of the auditory, from the way a door closes to the ringtones on telephones to contrasts between hallways and bedrooms, between shared and public spaces, between the intimate and the open. Soundspace design considers the sonic (that which generates sound output) and the acoustic (that which filters sound to create the total environment). Soundscape Design aids in wayfinding in hospitality and healthcare, supplants elevator music, sets the environmental tone, and mitigates traffic noise with our proprietary technologies.

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spatial movement

complete immersion

generative, and non-repeating

associative and interactive behaviors

total sensory space

integrated lighting control

locally sourced sound

site-specific

functional: sets mood, reflects environment, suggests behaviors, and mitigates traffic noise

adding maximum variability to water sounds

tunability of space

capture the sound and communication of trees

mirror the mystical springtime dawn chorus of birds

make sound experience responsive

trigger listeners' innate biophilia

steel mandalas with transducers for enveloping resonance without speakers

wabisabi philosophy reflected in ‘aging’ of sounds.

feng shui concepts for sound placement

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Soundspace design expands the experience of sound, even if that experience leads towards silence. By offering total immersion with dozens of invisible speakers, an experience like being in a forest, yet with the comforting surround of the home, is available on demand.

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The loudspeaker should be invisible, or it should be an integrated sculptural component of the design. We design our own invisible or transparent technology, often integrated into surfaces like metals or acrylics or woods, and we work with top Italian manufacturers and designers to source the most incredible sonic components that can integrate into design.
Our other unique contribution is integration of sound experience into objects, like outdoor chairs and shoji screens, so the origin of the sound is never an issue, it is just in you and around you. This removes the artificiality of digital playback, and makes the immersive sound environment seamlessly meld to visual design.

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Based on the book by Amber Case and Aaron Day

What makes a sound annoying?

Not appropriate for the situation

Played at the wrong time

Dynamics out of scale (too loud or too soft)

Distorted

Lack of agency by listener

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Sound design can mean the difference between a noisy and cluttered world and a quiet, elegant one. It's time that designers have the tools they need to make sound an integral part of the user experience.

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We change the very essence of sound content: too many sites end up with satellite commercial music services, like excoriated elevator music, with no thought to what is local, personal, individual, and unique. By constructing a soundscape which is different every day, yet offers a rhyme of familiarity, we can make an experience which is unforgettable, immersive, and valuable to host and client in any hospitality situation. Technology is effaced, biophilia promoted.

Natural sound sources:

biophilic, locally recorded (dawn chorus)

wabisabi, ‘aging’ of sounds

creating sense of time, history, emotion

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Restoring agency to public space sonic content is an important goal. One should always be able to say: who chose this sound and why?

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Unique Proposition from Livingston Sound

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Unique Proposition from Livingston Sound

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Defining soundspace

Tuning the space

Using elements of nature sound and instruments to create an original composition

Multisensory space, complementing the visual

Setting the tone

Working with acoustics and sonics to benefit the user of the space

Shouldn’t be thought of as music, but total sound experience

Design the silence

Technology is used to its advantageous limits, but then is supplanted by the naturalness of experience

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Architectural Space Articulated through Sound

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Architectural Space Articulated through Sound

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Sound can complement architecture, increasing the feel of shelter that might exist in an outdoor seating circle or an indoor nook. Sound can even 'create' architecture, by defining spaces for certain uses that welcome visitors.  Sound creates oasis, defines sacred space, along with acoustics design, of course.
We specialize in sound outdoors for these purposes, creating individual retreats and group spaces. Our newest product is a sonic shoji screen, which uses sound to create an experience you can quickly shape around yourself for a private moment, and it is deployable inside or out.
Soundspace Design activates hallways, lobbies, public and private space, allows instant tunability of space so that a cocktail event can be held in the same room that hosted a dawn yoga class.

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A spatial sense is realized with sophisticated digital signal processing software which can put sounds in to motion through a room or garden, using multiple speakers to convey the richness of being in the woods, on a river, amidst ocean waves. High technology disappears, and a natural experience emerges.

A theater artist writes on what immersion can mean for a listener:
Complete saturation within an experience…fully embracing both the challenges and rewards — of the environment, the weather, the time and location, and the people present.

Full sensory engagement, awakening the sensory pores, action happening in multiple directions, on multiple levels — literal and figurative…a richly-layered experience.

Profound engagement requires connecting with an audience member’s heart, intellect, and physical/sensory self. Arguably anything that effectively does this is “immersive” — you are immersed into the experience, you lose the normal, the every day, and you are instead submerged into a concentrated experience that heightens your awareness.

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Changing the Way Sound is Delivered and Sensed

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Changing the Way Sound is Delivered and Sensed

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sound radiating through furniture and objects

full surface

metal surface

whole window

furniture immersion

through mechanical/acoustical instruments
Live acoustical instruments, a sort of indoor windchime

Outdoor windchimes that are more timbral than pitched, for sanity

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Livingston Sound is famous for its immersive chairs, designed for outdoor meditation and personal calmness, which radiate sound through the surface into your body for a highly tactile experience.

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Two new versions created for Spring 2015:

String Quartet with 22 Intermissions (Please Be Seated)
Composition for Dumbarton Oaks Gardens (National Geographic's Sixth Greatest Garden in the World) by Hugh Livingston. The gardens, in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC, are open to the public 2-6pm, except Mondays.

West Coast version, at the new sonogarden Healdsburg, opened May 2015 in Sonoma County. 10am-dusk daily at the Duchamp Hotel, just behind Shed. Free parking while visiting the garden.

The string quartet presents the visitor with two unusual experiences. First, the feeling of the string instrument's fundamental resonances, radiating through the chair into the body. Second, the true nature of the counterpoint between the intertwined individual voices of a string quartet. By placing the experience at the center of that interchange, rather than at the distance typical of a concert hall, a new insight is offered into the essence of chamber composition. The voices of the string quartet are in fact all cello, recorded by the composer. There are canons and inversions and call-and-response, mimicking the easy intimacy of the social nature of a quartet, and inviting the listener to share in that experience.

Garden designer Beatrix Farrand wrote that with the sound of falling water and the wood thrush, peace comes 'dropping slow' to the garden at Dumbarton Oaks. She was referencing The Lake Isle of Innisfree, in which William Butler Yeats writes "And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings." While the energy of the composition changes from moment to moment, many of the 23 sections reference either the sound of the wood thrush, or the feeling of peace descending on the garden.

These custom-made sonic chairs by Livingston Sound have transducers that radiate sound through the sitter's spine, making for the ultimate in immersive experiences. The idea was first developed as an attempt to connect an audience with the tactile essence of playing the cello, conveying the immediacy of the vibrations felt by the performer. Two elements are always combined in the installation known as Please Be Seated : cello performances by Hugh Livingston and sounds of flowing water. Each chair in the group is different, encouraging audience engagement with different experiences, ranging from long sustained ringing notes to rapidfire pizzicato.

Below, watch an annotated video of the first installation, at the Kaiser Rooftop Garden. Over 3,500 people have enjoyed the cello chairs. Order a set today!

The installation Please Be Seated has been exhibited in Washington DC, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, Healdsburg, Prague, Slavonice (CZ) and Schlägl (AUS). It can be combined with live performance, and be made interactive based on actions of the audience. The most common form of the installation is 4 chairs arrayed some distance from each other in an outdoor setting. A table can also be used, with sound emerging from it as well. Each sound source provides a separate musical line, so that the experience varies with position, yet the lines join together in a unified musical experience. Sounds of any river can be requested.

We are excited to have transferred the audio chair technology to a new chair, the Coccolona from S.C.A.B. Design in Italy. These are more readily available, and in different colors, as well as in a loveseat. Ideal for outdoors and poolside, we can give you an exciting - or relaxing - playlist of original music designed to be experienced through the surface of the chair.

These are available for experiencing at the Dumbarton Oaks Garden in Washington DC (opened March 2015 and continuing indefinitely) and in the showcase ﻿sonogarden﻿ in Healdsburg, CA (opened May 2015).

Installed in the front courtyard of the Conrad Prebys Music Center at the University of California, San Diego on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Music Department, Sonic Diasporas, January 2011.

Nice little feature video newly made by the Dumbarton Oaks staff describing the art in the gardens program.

Prefer to lounge by the pool and have a full-body immersive, chakra-aligning experience? We can retrofit any chair or chaise.

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Two new versions created for Spring 2015: String Quartet with 22 Intermissions (Please Be Seated) Composition for Dumbarton Oaks Gardens (National Geographic's Sixth Greatest Garden in the World) by Hugh Livingston. The gardens, in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC, are open to the public 2-6pm, except Mondays.

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Our musical systems propose ways that occupants of a home or hospitality space can have agency over their sonic experience. We are particularly focused now on designing a set of acoustic instruments which can be embedded in resonant cavities in the walls of a room, and activated either by the occupant or by electromechanical means. For market reasons, we aren't saying more right now, but it is going to sound very exciting when we unveil later this year!

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Generative experience responds to inputs and creates appropriate sonic environment

Time trigger for different times of day

Associative and interactive behaviors that are friendly to occupants

Customizable: individual homeowner can take control

Time of Day, Time of Year, visitor count, occupancy, activity responses

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A gentle listening experience (let me just share my screen).

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Adding Immersion to the Expression of Sound

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Adding Immersion to the Expression of Sound

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Complete saturation within an experience…fully embracing both the challenges and rewards — of the environment, the weather, the time and location, and the people present. Full sensory engagement, awakening the sensory pores, action happening in multiple directions, on multiple levels — literal and figurative…a richly-layered experience.

Profound engagement requires connecting with an audience member’s heart, intellect, and physical/sensory self. Arguably anything that effectively does this is “immersive” — you are immersed into the experience, you lose the normal, the every day, and you are instead submerged into a concentrated experience that heightens your awareness. —Ava Roy, We Players, on creating immersive theater

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A large portion of our process is observation and documentation of the site, recording local nature sounds and bringing that material into the designed environment. We have many unusual microphone technologies, to record the vibrations of the earth, the ultrasonic communications of bats, the creeping sap inside a tree, and bring all of these components into their own musical voice.

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The 'dawn chorus' is the slow but steady growth of forest voices heard as the birds begin their day. It actually begins before dawn, usually at what is called 'nautical twilight', when the first light hits the horizon, typically an hour before sunrise is officially recorded.

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Rich capture of babbling brooks, but also sea creatures, snapping shrimp, whale song, and more.

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Suited to record deep in the soil, including roots, animals, insects and earthquakes. Also excellent for capturing subtle sonic activity inside a tree.

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In ecoacoustics, audio recordings are used to analyze ecological relationships. Almost every organism produces sound waves as its life manifestation. Be it movement activity or communication, we can potentially hear which organism does what under which circumstances on the one hand, and we may contextualize the organism's activity with the sounds of the environment on the other.

The SRF programme „Einstein" dedicated an entire programme to ecoacoustics, Sounding Soil and Marcus Maeder: Watch programme from 21.11.2019 (only in German).

Sounding Soil is an interdisciplinary research and art projectin which the sounds of soil ecosystems play the main role. The "Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology ICST" of the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK first developed special soil sensors and adapted existing recording devices. This now allows us to listen to the soil and hear the crawling, scratching, communication sounds and eating noises of the animals underground.

Specially developed recording device.

Sensors for recording the ground noise.

Sounding Soil's acoustic soil recordings and the soil samples obtained in parallel in 2017 and 2018 were evaluated and statistically analyzed. The first results show that differently used soils sound different, too.The analyses also indicate that the greater the diversity of living organisms in a soil, the more complex its sound. A scientific paper on this was published in the magazine "Soundscape" (pages 5 - 14).

The number of samples, however, was still too small to obtain statistically valid results. For this reason, in 2019 and 2020 further soils were investigated acoustically and compared with conventional examination methods. The acoustic signals and the underlying ecological processes in different soils were analyzed in additional long-term experiments. These analyses were used to investigate whether soil noise changes throughout the seasons or due to microclimatic conditions. The scientific paper on this has been published in march 2022.
Information on the soil ecosystem and ground noise

Marcus Maeder, artist and researcher, created Sounding Soil as a part of his doctoral research in environmental sciences at ETH Zurich.

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This page presents the research within Sounding Soil. It is about ecoacoustics. Here, processes in nature are studied by means of sound recordings. The research aims to show whether acoustic soil recordings can serve as a measurement method for biodiversity and the condition of the soil.

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For recording single bird species from a large distance.

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Isolates the ears and provides an extraordinary spatial simulation when listened to over headphones.

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Physically connects with a resonating object, instead of picking up air vibrations, for unusual perspectives.

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Turns electromagnetic environmental activity into audible sounds.

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Captures very high frequencies, such as bat sounds. Can be used to pitch shift them down into the audible range for instant bat detection in the field.