The ''Vessel Orchestra'' is a sound-based art installation created by British artist
Oliver Beer. It is the first sound-oriented installation ever commissioned by the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
. The installation is composed of 32 objects from the museum's collection. Each object has a microphone placed in its hollow space in order to capture the natural sounds that each piece
resonate
Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration whose frequency matches a resonant frequency (or resonance frequency) of the system, defined as a frequency that generates a maximu ...
s. Beer chose each object for its unique
pitch. For instance, a clay vase by
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà ( , ; ; 20 April 1893 – 25 December 1983) was a Catalan Spanish painter, sculptor and Ceramic art, ceramist. A museum dedicated to his work, the Fundació Joan Miró, was established in his native city of Barcelona ...
resonates the musical note low F. The internal microphones, which do not touch the objects, are connected to a mixer, which is hooked up to a keyboard, therefore allowing a musician to "play" the objects, creating music. The installation was opened to the general public on July 2, 2019,
and was on display at the
Met Breuer
The Met Breuer ( ) was a museum of modern and contemporary art in the Breuer Building at Madison Avenue and East 75th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It served as a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ( ...
until August 11, 2019.
During the exhibit the installation played repeatedly a 20-minute loop of a composition by Beer. In addition, the instrument was played on Friday evenings during live music performances by guest musicians.
The installation includes two and a half
octaves
In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...
in a
chromatic scale
The chromatic scale (or twelve-tone scale) is a set of twelve pitches (more completely, pitch classes) used in tonal music, with notes separated by the interval of a semitone. Chromatic instruments, such as the piano, are made to produce the ...
, from low C to high G.
It took Beer four years to create the installation. Some of the objects in the installation had never been on display in the museum before.
The project was co-curated by Lauren Rosati and Limor Tomer.
List of works
Beer used the following objects in The Met's collection for ''Vessel Orchestra''; works are listed as they appeared in the installation clockwise from the entrance.
References
Further reading
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External links
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{{Metropolitan Museum of Art, state=expanded
Installation art works
Contemporary works of art
Interactive art
Audio works
Visual music