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Swimming Fish Make Music in Quiet Ensemble's 'Quintetto' Installation

by Matthew Zuras on June 9, 2010 at 04:35 PM

quintetto by quiet ensemble
Swimming, musical fish are about as tranquil as you can get. Quiet Ensemble, a studio founded by Fabio Di Salvo and Bernardo Vercelli that explores the relationships between art, technology and music, recently took third place at the Celestprize contemporary art gathering in Berlin for the work 'Quintetto.' Composed of a series of five tall fish tanks, back-lit in a darkened space, Quintetto uses video cameras to track the movements of the single fish in each aquarium and produce ethereal sounds. Quiet Ensemble's installation notes read, "The basic concept is to reveal what we call 'invisible concerts' of everyday life."

The fish's movements, captured by the video camera, are translated by computer software to generate real-time music. (Not that the depths of the sea are silent; fish species have their own unique noises, some of which are even audible to the human ear.) But Quiet Ensemble must have thought a darker version of 'Music for Airports' more appropriate for its installation than the real clicks and whinnies produced in nature.

Our question is: why not just use a prerecorded soundtrack? You can check the video for yourself below, but the connection between the sounds produced and the fish themselves is not immediately apparent. We get the whole "symphony of nature" angle, and we did notice that each tank appears to represent a different layer of the music, however vaguely. The use of tech seems like overkill in an installation that could have been made much more simply. [From: PSFK]


Tags: ambient, art, BernardoVercelli, brian eno, BrianEno, FabioDiSalvo, fish, FishTank, installation, music, MusicForAirports, QuietEnsemble, quintetto, top

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