Meeting the Garden Halfway: Ethnographic Encounters with a Sound Installation Microculture

This article follows the installation of a sound art project titled Pleasure Garden in a historic garden in Sydney, Australia. Discussing various activities, from laying cables to mixing the installation, I argue that an ethnographic perspective can deepen our sense of what is meant when sound art is described as a "practice". The article discusses the distinctive microculture that emerged around the installation process and traces issues of creative agency, epistemology, and ontology at stake as diverse actors-the creative team, the technological infrastructure, the garden, and its inhabitants-were brought into relationship.