MUSICIANS will be submerged in glowing tanks for a "spectacular" underwater concert later this year, it has been announced.
Developed over nine years by Denmark's Between Music, the AquaSonic event will receive its UK premiere at the Sonica festival in Glasgow in October.
The biennial festival champions "the best in visual sonic art" and this year artists from 12 countries across five continents will take part.
AquaSonic will see performers use special vocal techniques to sing underwater, with adapted instruments used to meld whale song and chamber music for what is billed as "an unmissable, otherworldly event" at the city’s Tramway venue.
Meanwhile, a suspended electric guitar installation by Mexico’s Manuel Rocha Iturbide will challenge the difference between silence and sound and "invite visitors to break the tension by plucking its strings" and audio visual shows will be staged at Glasgow Science Centre’s planetarium.
Water, sewing needles, glass tumblers and copper wire coils will be combined with electric currents at the Govanhill Baths for a unique sound experience by Japan’s Nelo Akamatsu, the festival’s artist in residence, who will also create a special piece using glass vessels and magnets to create sounds inspired by vortices at The Lighthouse.
Viewers can listen to the result through a spiral-shaped pipe that resembles the cochlea of the human ear.
And Shorelines, which recently debuted in Rotterdam and is inspired by the North Sea Flood of 1953, which battered the Netherlands and claimed lives there and in the UK, will explore the beauty and power of the sea as climate change alters our relationship with the waves.
The festival is presented by multimedia arts company Cryptic, whose artistic director Cathie Boyd said: “Cryptic is thrilled to be able to open Sonica 2017 with an unmissable UK premiere of one of the most jaw-dropping concerts you're likely to see. AquaSonic is truly unlike anything audiences will have experienced before and to be able to show it to UK audiences for the first time is an honour for Sonica and Glasgow.
“Sonica is the perfect opportunity to experience what happens when technology, science and art get together.”
Tickets for AquaSonic are now on sale, with further events to be revealed in July.
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