A concert whose musicians are underwater.
The musicians are underwater. AquaSonic puts performers, voices and specially developed instruments inside water tanks, making the concert’s environment part of the instrument.
DK DenmarkIn practice. A professionally developed performance by Denmark’s Between Music, with five performers in water-filled tanks.
What to keep in view
This is a professionally developed performance, not an instruction to sing or play underwater. Promotional descriptions establish the artistic setup, not audience wellbeing outcomes or claims that water universally improves sound.
The medium changes the instrument
Between Music’s AquaSonic is performed by five people in water-filled tanks. The production uses underwater singing and instruments developed for this medium, with hydrophones carrying the sound to the audience. Laila Skovmand and Robert Karlsson are central to its development.
Change the physical medium of performance, then develop the instruments it requires.
A constraint worth composing for
Our reading: water is not scenery around an otherwise conventional concert. It changes what the body and instrument can do, so the artistic premise demands new techniques and tools. The result is compelling because the constraint is real.
A changed environment can create a new category of experience when the tools are genuinely rebuilt for it.
Read next.
A room with more ways into music.
Both change the physical experience of music. One opens participation through several senses; the other changes the medium in which professionals perform.
Eight spinning motors become an instrument.
Both create musical possibilities from physical behaviour. Water changes the performing medium; rotating motors become a controllable sound source.