WATERDRUMS

WATERDRUMS : art-science installation

WATERDRUMS is a performative acoustic and visual device. Six structures are arranged frontally on the stage, facing 4 screens positioned at the back. These structures are arranged in two groups of three, forming distinct ensembles each composed of three basins filled with water (a circular one surrounded by two smaller rectangular ones). The circular basins are topped by large horizontal circular screens. Two musicians enter the stage and stand behind each circular pool. When they hit the surface of the water, sounds, such as percussions, fill the space. At the same time, circular light waves propagate on the screens above them. Each time a musician hits the surface of a rectangular pool, a landscape of moving waves appears at the back of the stage. The musicians play these strange sensitive instruments. With each movement, each liquid solicitation, the space vibrates. The light pulses and spreads over different surfaces in response to a device able to capture the deformations of the environment, transcribing their stresses in an audible manner. The two musicians accentuate their gestures and develop structured actions transforming the movement of water into sound and light which gradually invade the public space. Radius vibrations are projected, in harmony with sound, into the entire performance space. Images and sounds fill the room, appear on the ceiling and walls and take the viewer into a new immersive experience, in a continual metamorphosis.
Seventy percent of our environment is made of water. Every day, we jeopardise this gift from earth. Water Drums invites us to play with water, to tame it, to rediscover its beauty in a sublimated gesture of possible communion.