The Pearl Divers

Dubai Creek Harbor, AE

Part of the Musical Shadows series, The Pearl Divers is an interactive pavement of light-sensor and audio tiles that can be arranged in multiple configurations.

For centuries, people in Dubai used to dive into the sea looking for pearls, known as the “local gold”. Day and night, shadows trigger traditional bayati and hijaz melodies, to pay a tribute to this local forgotten tradition.

Passersby shadows cast on the interactive pavement trigger melodies that evolve depending on the light. Dawn or dusk, different melodies will be heard. People are free to choose how they want to engage, simply walking through the pavement or dancing with their entire bodies; alone or together.

From the series Musical Shadows, Pearl Divers brings a new sound dimension to the city. Because the project is embedded into the architecture, it stimulates the emergence of new gathering habits, and opportunities for people to move together in public spaces. By inviting them to explore the project with their entire body, inhibitions are lost and performance takes over. 

Pearls are raindrops filled with moonlight that have fallen into the sea and were swallowed by oysters

Local Saying

Awards and Recognitions

  • Best in Category for Optimizing at the 2021 Interaction Awards

Credits

    • A project by Daily tous les jours
    • This project was created for Emaar
  • Creative direction
    • Mouna Andraos
    • 
Melissa Mongiat
  • Technological Direction
    • Eva Schindling
  • Sound Direction
    • Michael Baker
  • Narrative environment
    • Anne Ouellette
  • Environment Design
    • Rebecca Taylor
  • Interactive Direction
    • Pierre Thirion
  • Art Direction
    • Dina Khalil
  • Production
    • Irene Chaudouet
    • Anastasia Starova
  • Industrial Design
    • Studio Dikini
  • Original Soundtrack
    • Radwan Ghazi Moumneh
  • Electrical Design
    • CEGA
  • Technical Direction and Associate Production
    • Wireframe
  • On-site Production
    • XYZ
  • Fabrication

    • Atelier B
    • Atelier Papineau
  • Assembly
    • Caroline Ariane Bergeron
    • Thibault Desmoulin
    • Jérémy Dumont
    • Anne Kierans
    • Stephen McLeod
    • Marie-Jade Menni
    • Malcolm Remple
  • Video Shoot Direction
    • Kelly Nunes
  • Video Images
    • Blackmango Productions
    • Victorine Yok
  • Editing
    • Geoffrey Boulangé
  • Special thanks to
    • Farid Andraos, Emile Mongiat and Gehad Risk
  • Powered with
    • MaxMSP, Arduino

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