New Sensorio exhibit lets you stroll through a symphony of music and light
Artist Bruce Munro remembers watching formal orchestra performances as a child with just one wish on his mind — he wanted to hear the music from the heart of the stage.
He laughed off the memory until about five years ago, when he was commissioned to create the fifth art installment at Sensorio — the immersive light and sound exhibit planted in the rolling hills of Paso Robles.
As he brainstormed the new exhibit, that silly childhood memory quickly became his inspiration.
“As with many other children, all I wanted to do was wander around the orchestra while they were playing — and that occurred to me as an adult that, well, why can’t this be possible?” Munro said in an interview with The Tribune on Thursday.
And now, it is.
Sensorio’s newest exhibit, FOSO: Fiber Optic Symphonic Orchestra, invites visitors to wander through a fiber optic orchestra of 32 solar-powered columns — each synced to its own track of the overall composition.
The music was composed by acclaimed musician Nainita Desai, whose work has appeared in television and movies.
As onlookers walk from one column to the next, they’ll hear the different voicings of the orchestra, each paired with its own color scheme and pulses of light.
From one, you’ll hear strings. From another, you’ll hear percussion. Another may chime in with horns.
But it’s all part of a bigger performance — take a step back to look around and visitors will get an immersive symphonic experience that shrouds them in music and light and melts into Paso Robles’ natural beauty.
The FOSO exhibit has been in the works for about five years, Munro told The Tribune. The soundtrack, titled “Tessellation,” took over two years to produce, Desai added.
While Munro was inspired by the orchestra, Desai took her inspiration from her education in mathematics.
And the project took her out of her comfort zone, she told The Tribune.
“I’ve never scored an installation, so that was a really interesting proposition that filled me with fear, because I was diving into the unknown,” she said.
Munro’s guidance for Desai, she said, was just to create a composition that started with an orchestra tuning up and ended with the orchestra tuning down.
As a film and television composer, Desai typically writes music for visual stories — but for FOSO, she had to create her own story, she said.
“I dug deep into my background in mathematics ... and tried to bring out the intersection between the beauty of numbers in nature and science and patterns of light,” she said. She also tried to “connect the dots” between music and emotion, she added.
The work ultimately resulted in what Desai described as a “synesthetic” experience, known as FOSO.
After working intensely on the score for so long, Desai saw the installation in real life for the first time Wednesday night, and it made her emotional, she said.
“It brought me to tears, because this was a culmination of many years of work and not knowing whether it was actually going to work or not in reality,” she said.
While her work on the score was done largely in solitude, she told The Tribune she’s excited to be able to now share it with other people.
“It’s an abstract experience, but the whole thing is to be able to share this with other human beings,” she said. “Ultimately, it’s about human connection.”
Also, good news for any visitors mesmerized by the music who want to play it at home. “Tessellation” is available on streaming platforms like Spotify.
FOSO debuted at Sensorio on April 11.
The new installation joins Munro’s other installations — Field of Light, Light Towers, Fireflies and Gone Fishing — at Sensorio. DIMENSIONS by HYBYCOZO is also available to ticketholders.
For more information, visit: sensoriopaso.com.
This story was originally published April 12, 2025 at 11:00 AM.
