Global Sound Movement: Morske Musak

Abstract

Founded in 2015 and winners of the Times Higher Education award for ‘Excellence and Innovation in the Arts 2016’, the Global Sound Movement make a significant contribution to the field of sound archiving. Focussing on new ways of disseminating research findings, GSM completed a multimedia installation in June 2018 titled - MORSKE MUSAK.

Morske Musak is a multimedia installation that situates Nikola Bašić’s Sea Organ (Zadar, Croatia) in dialogue with audience interactivity. Visual projections cohere with multichannel audio presentation, connoting Zadar as a place within which audiences are immersed.

The installation invites audiences to engage and interact with sound recordings of the Sea Organ via new instrument technology. Gestural control over musical, sonic, and sound-diffusion parameters of the installation allow audiences to engage imaginatively with Zadar’s Sea Organ. Tidal movement plays Bašić’s instrument in-situ; Morske Musak is designed to give agency to audiences whereby the intermodality between movement and sound parameters combines typically isolated elements. Effectively, through this interaction, audiences “perform” the Sea Organ as an instrument through control of discrete (pitch, rhythm) and/ or analogue (dynamics, diffusion) means.

The installation characterises original and innovative contributes to audience interactivity and engagement, generating discourse pertaining to issues of place, agency, and the preservation of sound. This instance of presenting our practice and research within an installation format has informed new practice and new presentations whereby audience engagement takes place in a live setting, extending the dissemination of our work beyond the remit of web-based distribution.