Soundscapes by Sonic Minds await, hidden in The Fields

Sonic Minds asks how we might connect more deeply to frequencies of mind and nature through sound. Created in collaboration with MSCTY_Studio, the initiative is an experiment that explores the overlapping lenses of sonic facets from different disciplines. It brings together scientists, musicians, sound engineers, spiritual teachers, dancers and people from a range of backgrounds. 

Together, the Sonic Minds community investigates the vast and complex territory of sound. Sonic Minds researches how music changes the social contexts of how we gather, our responses to environmental sounds and synthetic replications of them, the effects of the human voice (through chanting and song) on the mind and many more questions yet to be asked. The more we search, the more we discover, the more curious we become.

Appearing in The Fields (often in unexpected places) are sound installations that act as extensions of Sonic Minds’ exploration. Each draws from ideas of how we connect to ourselves, to each other and the world around us.

As a nod to the golden era of Japanese Kankyō Ongaku, a movement of ambient and environmental music during the 80s, these activations work in harmony with the landscape and its natural (or constructed) architecture.

Enter Wonder

As Wonderers arrive, Sonic Minds greets them with a representation of natural sounds from The Fields—and a recreation of them through semi-synthetic forms. Created by Kirk Barley and Elsa Hewitt, this piece builds upon work started at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). 

“It’s an ongoing investigation,” shares James Greer of MSCTY_Studio. “What would evoke a more positive reaction from people: the chirp of a real frog or bird, or the synthesized sounds that emulate a frog or a bird.”

We’re not the first to ask the question—musicians from around the world have replicated birdsong and animal calls for centuries, seeking to evoke feelings of nostalgia, calm and even joy. In the same vein, Enter Wonder aims to offer a glimpse of the wonder beyond the Box Office. 

You can catch a special live rendition of this piece in the Ancestral Forest. 

Synth Pop City Bangkok

“When we think of environmental music, we’re drawn towards the idea of a simpler, slower world,” reflects James. “In Synth Pop City Bangkok, we aim to turn that on its head, highlighting the busiest times of dawn and dusk.”

SOT’s cityscape-inspired space is the natural home for this experience. Both the venue and this activation honor our tropic city: industrial, hot, pulsing, busy and yet embracing pockets of truly wild life. Circadian rhythms of birdsong are replaced by industry, commerce and traffic noise.

“We’re also looking at how the sounds of urban environments may calm some people more effectively than nature,” adds MSCTY_Studio’s Nick Luscombe. “Personally, I feel a sense of calm listening to domestic sounds like the washing machine or people cycling past my window and the occasional car and train in the distance.”

Playing at different times of day, this installation was mixed with Dutch artist Shook, whose work and aesthetic pays homage to originators of Japanese Kankyō Ongaku and the work of Haruomi Hosono and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

The Bridge To Wonderness

Bridges help us move from one space to the next, rising above what we cannot touch and often don’t stop to wonder at. On the smaller bridge to Wonderness, a Sonic Minds sound installation features a playfully self-referential piece by Midori Takada, one of the original artists leading the Kankyō Ongaku movement.

“In this piece, Midori contemplates the deeper meaning of bridges,” says Nick. “Beyond physical crossings, we’re exploring bridges as the crossing point of a journey—pathways that connect people and ideas. I think those types of bridges are needed now more than ever.”

What you hear might change, depending on which side of the bridge you're walking from.

Sonic Interventions 

Designed by Ab Rogers and collaborating artists, Social Interventions are tucked away in less-explored places in The Fields, inviting Wonderers to enter and connect with each other. Inspired by this unspoken invitation, Sonic Minds and Mark de Clive-Lowe add sound elements that will intrigue and attract any nearby wandering Wonderer. Two different activations will play: one at the Kissing Benches, one within the natural living room of Our Parkland.

Through explorations and immersive experiences, Sonic Minds fill spaces with sounds to help recharge and recenter.

Music for Rest Rooms

Featuring the Japanese ambient music pioneer, Yumiko Morioka, this installation began as an exploration of spaces of peace and comfort, rooted in the artist’s home in the wilderness of Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Each of the five musical moments is complemented by an aromatic cue, flowing across a series of memories—each a time, place, feeling and scent.

1.SESERAGI.  瀬

– the air that purifies you and refreshes your body and soul –  

Just like being cleansed in the gentle stream of a cool mountain river in the peak of summertime, whose waters gently run over and around the little rounded stones. 

2.HANAYAGI. 華

– the flavour of subtle seduction by small ordinary flowers as the spring morning sunlight illuminates – 

There is a brightness in every flower you pick within the natural forest; even in the modest small budding weeds that glisten in the sun yet are so often ignored. 

3.SOYOGI.  梵

– a fragrance that you can trust in, and hold close together as you fall, bringing perfect relaxation of your body – 

The sensation of being at peace while watching yourself falling into an abyss of a deep lake in the moonlight–slowly, and with perfect comfort. 

4.YURAGI. 揺

– the musky fog of silver mountain mists that surround and cleanses you －

Looking down from the mountain over faintly-visible rice paddies, framed by a vista of tall cedar trees amidst the soft dew of morning fog; hearing familiar morning tones as the valley awakens. 

5.MOEGI.  萌

– an aura that uncovers in its path such unreal colours, like the suppressed fire energy within you is escaping –  

There are many rich shades of green in the valley, but as you look at them during a sweltering summer, imagine if all the trees were red or purple? In the autumn, the power of nature casts a red-hot wave as far as we can see.

This piece was performed live for the first time at an intimate listening experience in Bangkok on 27 August 2025. It will play again in The Fields at some of our restrooms. We invite you to see if you can find which ones.

A sound installation to cleanse Baan Bardo

Sonic Mind’s sound work for Baan Bardo takes the idea of the Bardo, the intermediary state between one realm and another, one cycle and the next. Accentuating the venue’s kinetic maze, the sound installation challenges our perceptions of space, time and our place within them. The piece draws from readings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Dhyana’s Harry Einhorn, along with samples from spaces of transition—Hua Lamphong temple and the nearby train station. The music aims to comfort yet encourage our journey through a metaphysical Bardo.

This sonic concept is inspired by the power of the collective to create, conjure, harness and utilize new sounds through shared experiences.

Choomchon Forest

As night falls in the Ancestral Forest, memories of the diverse community of plants and trees come to life. A Forest Choir of humans resonating along with the forest (which was captured at our first inaugural FieldChapters by the Choomchon Frequency Orchestra's Opening Ritual) and echoes of the forest’s collective sonic memory. Choomchon Forest echoes across the canopy from the Mother Tree source, voiced by musician Notep.

Sleep is one of the most rare fundamental and universal activities that every living thing on this planet must do in order to recharge, find respite and gain a new approach to life. This sound-based sleep program seeks to find ways to facilitate the practice of recharge, sleep and rest through sound.

Sound Sleep: Music for Napping

Sleep is a universal element of life. It’s a universal activity, shared by all people—a state we spend much of our life in, yet much of what goes on during that time remains an unmentioned, unexplained mystery during our daily lives. 

This performance drifts gently between wakefulness and wonder, an ode to the quiet rebellion of the nap. In a world of constant motion, pause and slip into that fragile in-between place where thoughts loosen, sounds soften and time folds in on itself. 

Divided into 6 parts, this performance is an invitation to rest with intention, to close your eyes, let the body tilt forward in stillness, to follow the tiny dreams that flicker behind the lids with the openness of someone just about to doze off. Let yourself wander. Let yourself nap.

1. Plane 1

Focus on the drones and subtle shifts of frequency we feel when travelling by aircraft, across the Himalayas towards Thailand from London. In a state of circadian disorientation, we can draw close to these minimal transitions and slowly drop off. 

2. Wash Cycle

Based on the experience of resting one’s head on the wall in a flat in South London, gazing into the spinning of a front-loading washing machine and being swept into calm sleep by its repeating cycles.

3. Traffic

Standing at a traffic junction in the vast suburbs of Greater Tokyo in the early hours of the morning, we can begin to lose ourselves in the risings, fallings, comings and goings of commuters. 

4. Raindrops

A long day’s afternoon in a studio in the red-brick terraced suburbs of middle England is suddenly interrupted by the onset of raindrops on the roof outside. A time to put down the mug of tea and take a short break, focusing on the rhythms of the storm and dozing into rest.

5. Ocean

Driving south an hour from Tokyo to the comparatively remote Miura Peninsula, to escape the heat during a balmy August afternoon, the waves lap gently and fuse with nature’s song to form a hazy, euphoric new music to nap with on the sand. 

6. Plane 2

We find ourselves travelling back on the airplane that led us on our journey—this time, just post turbulence as we pass over the Black Sea, bound for London Heathrow. With that disjointedness of circadian cycles, the cabin becomes familiar to us in a way that returns us to distant but ever-present memories of the womb state and the first sleep that we enjoyed.

Walk The Fields this December and discover these sound installations yourself. Tickets are available at the next public sale.