localStyle + neurobiologist/engineer Malcolm MacIver presented the premiere of their collaborative 'singing electric fish' installation at the 2010 STRP Festival, one of the largest art & technology festival venues in Europe. Located in Eindhoven, STRP stands for Strijp-S, the industrial site where Philips invented such items as the audio cassette and the CD.
scale is a bio-art audience-interactive installation that involves electric fish from the Amazon River Basin. Twelve different species of these fish comprise a 'choir' whose sonified electrical fields provide the source tones for an immersive audiovisual environment. We hope to foster wider public awareness of their valuable attributes and the fragility of their natural environment via this interspecies artwork.
The interface incorporates: custom-designed software, a touch-screen panel allowing participants to create a realtime mix in 12 channels and 'cue' individual fish so their unadulterated tones (as well as digitally processed versions) could be heard through the audio system, and LED arrays to provide visual feedback. Individual tanks are sculpturally arranged in an arc and connected to a sophisticated filtration and water conditioning system.
Project support came via grants from the National Science Foundation, Northwestern University's Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, University Research Council, and the Murphy Society.