There are 7 rocks containing synthesizers and speakers. Basically its a sculpture with a base of artificial turf, so the grass is a stage and the rocks are instruments. Some people just look, other people turn a knob or two, and then others stay for a while and really get into it. This is a work in progress and the most recent installation was called “A Presumption of Collectivity” (after a section from Jean Baudrillard’s The System of Objects) and the following notes accompanied it:

Muzak Corporation, the best-known supplier of elevator music, has lost money for 11 straight years - about the same time span the public has been using the Internet. Decades before Muzak was founded, Erik Satie wrote compositions (musique d’ameublement) and asked the public to ignore them while they were performed. The music was supposed to be like furniture, or even light. There and not there. The United States military is playing a similar game in reverse: they drop rocks into the landscape that listen for footsteps and transmit the location to headquarters. These same rocks play smooth jazz and uncomplicated electronic music to theme parks and restaurants everywhere on this side of enemy lines.

Who knows what William Shenstone would have thought? Shenstone in his posthumously published notes “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening” (1764) focuses on “landscape” or “picturesque gardening,” meaning the creation of a phsyical scene in a manner similar to painting. Whereas Rousseau wouldn’t tolerate anything man-made in his wilderness, Shenstone’s rural landscape wasn’t complete without the touch of man - a little building, a ruin.