Video clip: Mocean as a musical instrument
Maia Marinelli, Jared Lamenzo & Liubo Borissov
The human body is mostly water.
We live in water for the first nine months of our lives. Deep within our minds, the thread that weaves the substance of our existence resonates. Being close to water, to play with it, is an innate desire.
Mocean frames a time and a space to explore our lost memory in a literal way.
Mocean is an immersive environment that creates sensory relationships between natural media.
As an interactive installation, Mocean invites members of the audience to touch, stir and play with water in a clear tank. The movement of the water is translated into movement of air in a large array of antique organ pipes suspended above the water. The sound of the organ pipes envelops the person stirring up the water, its movement echoing the waves and ripples in the tank.
Mocean involves 25-100 organ pipes connected to a set of blowers via a sculptural tubing structure. Each blower activates a module of at least four pipes. The dimensions of the installation can be adapted to different spaces, but it its smallest form, it can be placed in a cube of 10 x 10 x 10 ft. A water tank of at least 2 x 3 x 2 ft is positioned at torso level and the organ pipes are hanging around and above the tank roughly at ear level. A small video camera is placed below the tank together with a light which illuminates the water from below. The camera image is sent to a computer, which analyzes the movement of the waves and sends commands to a custom built microchip board, which turns the blowers on and off. The air from the blowers is routed through clear tubing to the organ pipes. The spatial arrangement of the pipes reflects the physical dimensions of the tank, thus it is possible to create the sensation of moving sound around by moving water in a particular direction. As the interaction with the water grows to develop into an intuition about the spatial and tonal arrangement of the pipes, and the natural rhythms of the system, Mocean becomes a musical instrument.
© 2004 Mocean Project
For additional information, booking or to request a DVD, please contact maiamari [at] maiamarinelli.com
Hi-res press images are available here: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5].