In the playful context of Seattle Center’s festival grounds, Sonic Bloom is a permanent interactive art installation at the foot of Seattle’s Space Needle and a defining entry sculpture to the Pacific Science Center. 5 giant solar flowers absorb the sun’s energy and express it at night with patterned LED lighting and in the daytime with a chorus of interactive harmonic tones triggered by people’s movement around each flower. The striped stalks are also massive barcodes that allow inquisitive types to decode the supersized puzzle.
The title Sonic Bloom refers not only to our defining location “on the Puget Sound” but also to the artwork itself that sings as the public approaches each flower. Every flower has its own distinctive series of harmonic notes simulating a singing chorus. A hidden sensor located in each flower identifies movement and triggers the sound. So if there are 5 people engaging the flowers together, it is possible to compose and conduct music together or by walking through, randomly set off a harmonic sequence.
