Listen up as the world's only underwater orchestra serenades Hong Kong.
It's been called an extraordinarily original sound that's as fascinating as it is eerie, and one that is haunting in the most beautiful way. AquaSonic, the vision of Denmark's Between Music, bends the laws of science and shifts the paradigms of art in every possible respect. Dubbed the world's first underwater orchestra, the sound-soaked conglomeration of subaqueous music-makers includes physicists, vocalists, audio engineers, neuroscientists, and deep-sea divers performing innovative concerts in a hybrid of music, visual arts and new technology.
The group has also built highly specialised instruments – carbon-fibre violins, an underwater organ or hydraulophone, rotacorda, and others – which turn binary thinking into an array of multi-fathomed perspectives.
Accoustics in water function very differently than on land – moving an instrument just 10 centimetres underwater can entirely change its sound. So all are precisely placed to get the desired effect. Temperature matters, too; the water in the tanks is kept between 34-37 degrees.
The performers have also perfected a distinctive vocal technique for underwater singing and the whole takes on a surreal over-and-undertone. The unlikely encounter also offers an exciting glance into the future possibilities of sound.
Since its 2016 world premiere in the Netherlands, AquaSonic, led by Danes Laila Skovmand and Robert Karlsson, graduates of the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, has become a viral phenomenon with more than 30 million social-media views. See, hear and believe it.
AquaSonic is playing at Sha Tin Town Hall Auditorium in Hong Kong from October 26 to 28
