Ashley Albert, a co-owner of the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club, said coming up with the idea and finding the fish was one thing; choreographing the fish was another.
Friday, November 15, 2019
Chicago bar installs over 70 Big Mouth Billy Bass to sing popular songs in unison
Ashley Albert, a co-owner of the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club, said coming up with the idea and finding the fish was one thing; choreographing the fish was another.
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This is delightful. It is absolutely delightful. Can you even buy Big Mouth Billy Bass from normal stores anymore or did these all have to be hunted down for “reuse”? This is a much better life than being in a dumpster for these things, not to mention a greener solution for them as well. I also love the way that technology was used by Studio Quasi to make this a reality. What a great article to enforce how many of the weird things that we do in theater and that we are learning in this school are often things that can be incorporated off the stage and in shuffleboard clubs or other areas to bring delight and joy into otherwise ordinary interactions (like walking up a flight of stairs). The creativity in this project is stunning, and now I want to go visit this club to be serenaded by this darling Billy Bass group.
Yoooo what. I love it. Looks like I'm going to Chicago now. Just finding seventy of these had to be an enormous challenge. That said, programming them with original software doesn't even seem like the hardest aspect of this design. Like they sing AND dance while mounted on a wall?? Crazy. I'd love to be a patron of this bar and be greeted by 70 singing and dancing fish as I walk up the stairs. I just love the mind of the owner. I love how she looked at a blank wall and thought, "Oh yes. I know exactly what this needs." I especially love the songs where the fish have solos. It reminds me of something you'd see on a ride in Disney World, which makes sense because a lot of this programming is similar to what is used to animate the robots in Disney. This wall of fish is definitely something I would see on Splash Mountain while sitting in a log before I fell into the giant pool of water. In a Disney theme park, this kind of stuff makes sense. But in a bar in Chicago? Groundbreaking.
This is quite cool and very annoying. This fish are actually often a good time the first time you see them, usually in the store at CVS or other. Then they quickly become annoying as they say the same thing over and over with nothing new or exciting. This takes that idea and made it more fun. Taking a bunch of those fish and making them all synchronized and choreographed to various songs makes it quite enjoyable because now you have a good song and the complexity behind how this was created is just fascinating. It would have been cool to be a part of a project like this because you really do have to create a whole package of editing hardware and creating software to make them do what you want them to do. If I ever end up in Chicago, this is something I will have to go see as this is one of those things that just makes a place a little more intriguing to go to.
Oh, I have to go to this place the next time I am in Chicago. Fascinating is an understatement. The creative team had to create software, re-program each fish and allow for edits to be able to change the songs. There are so many elements to this project. In terms of Automation, it was getting all the fish to move in unison or at different parts of a song (such as stayin alive). For programming, it was building software that didn’t exist before and for scenery, you have this blank wall that goes up a stairwell. I wonder what the software company who built this project intends to do with the software. How cool would it be to have this further developed for other scenic projects and installs. Something that a programmer (think lighting or sound) can set up and program and map each moving item to a song. That would be cool.
I'm glad that people have these out-there imaginations that can take them to the point of requesting a literal wall be covered in talking fish. I think gimmicks are what make places special, and the gimmicks at this bar are probably what keep its regular patrons coming back. And now they have a brand new gimmick. I'd be interested to see just what kind of command and control system these fish are now running on. I've had a few run-ins with trying to make consumer technology work with custom machines, and it is always harder than you think. Electrical Documentation is absolutely non-existent for these products and often trying to interface with the on-board controller is a real pain. I wouldn't be surprised if they had just ripped out the guts and replaced them with custom controllers, essentially driving all the motors and speakers of the fish themselves. I think that is what I would have personally done. I think what surprised me the most at this were the huge shuffleboard games. I guess shuffleboard must be pretty popular in Chicago.
This piece of collaborate interactive media art is so exciting to me for so many reasons. All the programming for software to work together, the scenery building for structural parts, wiring and modifying speakers for all seventy Big Mouth Billy Bass! And last, they still get the DJ part wonderfully done, choosing the right songs for the place and made the whole piece align taste wise. It seems that the project itself is simple enough, but how to get the mere idea of having fishes one the wall singing together to this complete artwork is so fascinating. Also I felt in this kind of projects, the uniqueness is a really important key to make them successful. If some people out there trying to make another wall of Big Mouth Billy it would be disappointing. That how I love this new media industry. People always looking for new possibilities with new technologies on hand, and it is never boring.
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