Hugh Livingston uses the term 'situational music' to describe anti-concert hall sound compositions, using the context of a space or event to define the characteristics of music and how people relate to it. Consequently, some works are intended for short bursts of listening several times a day while coming and going from an office building. Others are immersive, created for gardens or spas, allowing contemplation and assuming long periods of sustained listening.

Strings & Machines stays on the leading edge of sound reproduction technology, with the mission to make artistic sound environments ubiquitous, inexpensive to create and easy to maintain. Thus, you hear sound radiating from ironing boards, old windows, sheet metal, sculpture, dining room tables and antique chairs. Situational music encompasses the concept of relating to an acoustic and architectural space, as in the case of the sound installation created for a Frank Gehry parking garage.

Hugh's first situational opera was The Underground Gardens, a portrait of the California iconoclast Baldessare Forestiere, and Hugh also launched a situational recording label, producing 54 separate titles on the ARTSHIP in Oakland, released in a one-year period.