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ULTRA SOUND Video/Audio Installation, 2002 This installation is meant to create a stage on which information is transmitted through a medium and is changed by that medium, the information of sound, light, and metaphoric narrative. Sound passed through water moves faster and farther than through air, but is altered along its course. The installation consists of a water filled, 90 gallon aquarium dissected by a piece of ground glass onto which a video of a musician playing a xylophone underwater is being projected. The musician will be playing an original composition for this piece. Malcolm Lim has composed a musical piece to be played underwater on the xylophone. In the glass aquarium a hydrophone (underwater microphone) is submerged, on the other end of the tank an underwater speaker. The viewer is invited to take up a pair of suspended headphones from which they hear the xylophone song played through water from the other end of the tank. Suspended mid-air on either side of the tank is the video projector, DVD player and amplifier for the transmittal of the audio video information. The viewer participates in an immersive experience by tethering themselves to the body of water in the auditory cradle of the earphones and is meant to mimic an underwater world. The thing to which they cling is a measurable body of water, not quite human in scale, a reminder of the human body and/or an aquatic body of water. The water is a medium and a metaphor, it is the water though which the information of sound and light must pass through and it is the thing through which sound is transformed to another more ephemeral identity. The image of the player is like a sprite who is captive in a grave of its own imagining, not only is it metaphoric but also like a nautical fable, the percussive notes a watery soundtrack. The moving image of the musician hammering the instrument is one of discomfort and exertion against the aqueous substance, a frail, absurd and tragic act. Into the ominous, watery tank are immersed two technological fixtures, next to which the video projection is an eerie and intriguing image of disembodiment. The drama of the hopeful musician in the tank is made to come to life by the equipment dangling in the space around it. In the devotional object Ultra Sound, we’re confounded with the pristine and bright promise of a visual and auditory depiction, and given the contrasting delivery of the sensory information muddled by the softness of water, but made more poignant in the laborious act of finding its way to our eyes and ears. |
