Sounds Great
Artists: Bill & Mary Buchen
Art Work: Sound Playground, 1992, bronze & steel
Location: P.S. 23 at Washington Avenue and East 182nd Street, Fordham Road
Grades: K-6 and Special Needs
About the Art: The Sound Playground is interactive art that merges the making of sounds with sculptural forms. Instruments from around the world inspired the sculptures. For example, the bronze drums in Sound Playground are based on the North African dumbek. The artists were also influenced by the Chinese frog drum and Burmese prayer bells and wind chimes.
Questions for Discussion: Before exploring the sounds the sculptures make, ask students to suggest predictions. What shapes will make a high- or low-pitched sound? What will your voice sound like to the person listening at the other end? After predicting, let students explore the playground. After exploration, ask students what they want to know about the playground. Write the questions down for later research.
Sample Art Activity: Students create sculptures or musical instruments that make interesting sounds and are interesting to look at, using a variety of everyday materials to glue, tie, wire or tape. Each work has to make sounds by striking with the hand, blowing into it, or striking against itself or something else such as the floor.
Purpose: To explore connections between the arts of sculpture and music and between the arts and the science of sound.
Materials: cardboard tubes and boxes, dowels, wooden sticks, plastic utensils and containers, aluminum containers, scrap wood; wire, string, paints; white glue, glue gun (for teacher’s use), clean plastic combs, scissors, masking tape, rubber bands, bottles with varying amounts of water
Teaching Strategies:
- Several weeks before the trip, send out requests for recyclable materials to parents and school staff. Make sure the materials are clean, and sort them before storing.
- At the Sound Playground, ask students to just look at the sculptures in the Playground before exploring the sounds they make. Show an object that does not make sounds (like a comb). How could we change it to make sounds?
- During the art activity, ensure that the sculptures will stay in one piece by concentrating on how things stick together: work with balance and make sure there is enough space for moving parts to clear each other.
- Notice that some sculptures hang while others can be on top of tables (this also helps with storage).
- Limit number of objects students can use to about 5.
Closure: What did you learn about how sound is created? What shapes made high-pitched sounds and which made low sounds? Why? What did you learn about how to attach materials such as metal to cardboard? Other questions are based on "Want to Know" questions derived from the visit. Display sculptures with written explanations of procedures.
Extensions: For auditory learning: Create a song on your instrument to perform for the class. (Practice first!) Create a song for the whole class to perform, each on his or her own ‘instrument.’
For verbal learning: Write a story about an animal who lives under one of the sound-producing sculptures in the Sound Playground. Write a letter to the artists suggesting your ideas for another type of unique playground, such as one that incorporates games from around the world, or one that allows children to construct parts of it, or one built for blind or disabled children.
For kinesthetic learning: Create a model of one of the types of playgrounds described above. Working in small groups, create life-size sound-producing sculptures for display and use in your classroom. Use the most workable ideas from the class’ individual sculptures.
For logical learning: Research the science of sound and write a summary to read to the class. Develop an experiment for the class to try, to demonstrate what happens to human ears when different shapes vibrate to make sounds. Create an illustrated graph of the kinds of sculptures in the playground according to the sounds they make. Show the volume of sounds from low to high on a bar graph. Class can vote on the volume of the sounds.
National Art Education Learning Standards:
- Understanding and applying media, techniques and processes
- Using knowledge of structures and functions
- Making connections between visual arts and other disciplines
