Designed to accompany the visual experience of contemplating Judith Darragh’s Wire Less, Green Music is a mechanism made up of ropes and pulleys that controls four noisemakers (a set of fishing bells, wind chimes, bamboo chimes and a shaker) placed in the four upper corners of a room.
Green Music is both an installation and a musical instrument; as such, it can be played by one, two, three, and up to four musicians.
With a sound color/dynamic range as subtle and expressive as the ears of the beholders, the instrument is an open invitation to find pleasure in the contemplation of simple sounds in place. The interface, installed in the center of the room, allows the performer(s) / listener(s) to play all four noisemakers and therefore create a surround sound experience that is unlike any recreation of surround soundscapes achieved through loudspeakers.

I met Judy—and thus encountered her art—in 2016 while we were both Lucas Artists in Residence at Montalvo, in Saratoga, California.
I loved her work, or, I should say her world, immediately. Populated by a theory of fearless shapes and colors calling the viewer’s attention with their saturated palette, Judy’s sculptures are signs/totems pointing to a fundamental, if abstract, mystery. This and her passion for the color green, all meant that we were meant to become friends.
At once clashing and exciting, her work is the “green” music I so often wish to write. Eventually it occurred to us that our countries of origins, Italy and New Zealand, were a double inversion: both shaped like boots, Italy is pretty much antipodal to New Zealand, and also it’s a mirror version of it. And as we both realized that we come from islands (I’m an Italian from Sardinia), that meant that we were meant to become collaborators, and that we were meant to work in New Zealand on an installation made up of enchanting neon green foam islands and whispering noises.