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Bertoia housed many Sonambient sculptures in a barn near his home. His daughter Celia fondly recalls exploring the space. "Harry always told people he saved the best ones for the barn," she says. "When I was in high school, my girlfriends and I would sneak into the barn. We’d go running around in there and bang on all the different sculptures and just have a cacophony of sound in there—oh, it was fabulous! The whole concept is to have a sculpture that is not only visually pleasing but it’s auditory and tactile. If you were standing on the floor and all these pieces were toning you could even feel the vibration in the floor. It got in your whole body."

"In the barn, because there were so many of them there, it created this amazing aura and mood, almost spiritual," Celia says. "It would affect people differently: A jet pilot comes in there and he thinks it sounds like roaring planes. A group of nuns came in the barn and they said it sounded like church bells chiming. Each person interprets it in his or her own way."