Céleste Boursier-Mougenot - untitled (series #3)

"A trained musician, Boursier-Mougenot creates visually and acoustically intriguing installations where sound and sculpture merge, revealing unexpected beauty in the ordinary. His installation at Rice Gallery will include three large inflatable swimming pools, each fitted with silent water pumps and filled with floating porcelain bowls of varying size and dimension. Caught in the current of the circulating water, the porcelain vessels endlessly swirl around one another to hypnotic effect. Boursier-Mougenot 'tunes' the room conditions to exaggerate the alternatively cacophonous and harmonious sounds created by the gently colliding porcelain. Bowl size is varied to alternate pitch, water temperature is specified to maximize resonance of sound, and pump strength is controlled to affect frequency of collision. The resulting combination of sounds at any given point, however, is as much a product of chance as it is choreography. Visitors are invited to pull up one of the cafe chairs scattered around the gallery, to watch and listen as the piece unfolds." -- Rice Gallery website.