Normally, sights and smells draw visitors to the Naples Botanical Gardens. But between now and the end of May, sound will capture the senses.
A traveling exhibit ensconced at the Gardens will provide a musical interlude among the flowers, trees and shrubs and allow almost everyone a chance to be a orchestral conductor — of sorts.
The exhibit — Musical Swings — is nearly magnetic in its ability to draw one in and participate. Originally slated to conclude April 20, the Musical Swings has been extended at the Gardens through May 27.
When someone sits on one of the swings’ 10 seats and pendulums/swings back and forth, notes from four different instruments are triggered, producing a melody.
Different seats “play” different instruments. And when multiple swings move together — the higher the swing, the higher the note — virtually every single time what is created is a unique musical composition.
“When you're on the swings, you'll have this moment with someone who's swinging next to you, they could be a total stranger, where you're swinging and all of a sudden, you both are in the same rhythm," Sten Kerwin, the exhibition's coordinator, said.
“And once that moment happens, something changes in the music and you can hear it happen. And there's this 'A-Ha' moment between two strangers, where you realize we're cooperating here, we're connecting," she said. "The longer you cooperate, the more melodic the music becomes.”
Here's how the exhibit's Montreal, Canada, creators, Daily Tous Les Jours, detail the process
- Each swing triggers notes from a classical instruments: piano, guitar, harp and vibraphone. A seat color code indicates which instrument is played and invites the public to try different seats.
- The interactive soundtrack is inspired by the pendulum. The higher the swing, the higher the note.
- When the swings move together in unison, they create a musical composition through which unique melodies can emerge if participants cooperate.
- The gentle, kinetic quality of the acoustic sounds blends seamlessly into the urban environment.
Anyone can swing — young or old or in-between — and make music amid the Garden's foliage.
The nearly 18,000-pound weatherproof swing set is electrically powered and connected to the internet so it can be remotely monitored during the exhibit’s run.
The swing set — a series of swings in a three-four-three configuration — is about the size of a tandem semi-tractor trailer rig.
The exhibit has been drawing a lot of interest from visitors to the Gardens. Chrystal Wright, visiting from Toronto, Canada, recently experienced the Musical Swings with her family.
“I think they're awesome, the kids really like music and they like swinging, so it combines the two and I think was a really magical experience for them,” Wright said.
That the exhibit was in the midst of the Gardens only heightened the experience, she said.
"We've seen lots of butterflies. We saw some lizards my daughter happened to see a snake which was she was a little bit scared, but that added some excitement to the day and just lots of beautiful flowers and scenery back home in Canada there's not too much going on right now," Wright said. "So it was really nice to to see all the beauty."
Kerwin said there have been a lot of melodies produced by people swinging — going from what music lovers will recognize as an arpeggio — a type of broken chord in which the notes that compose a chord are individually sounded in a progressive rising or descending order — and then on to a full chord.
But having all 10 swings active at one time and producing the same melody has yet to happen at the gardens.
“What happens is called the Big Bang and it's a melody that we have yet to hear," she said. "But someone's gonna make it happen, we have till May 27.”
The Musical Swings began as a 2011 project called 21 Swings in Montreal. The success of that led to a touring version that was created for the Green Box Arts festival in Colorado. The Musical Swings have visited New York City, Detroit, West Palm Beach, Dhahran, Singapore, and more places around the world.
The Musical Swings exhibit is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The exhibit is in the Kapnick Caribbean Garden section of the Naples Botanical Gardens, 4820 Bayshore Dr., Naples.
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