The installation invites the audience to witness sand dunes within a gallery space. The dunes are surrounded by marked boundaries on the floor, circumscribing hypothetical countries, islands, and continents on the imaginary map.

Over time, the sand seeps beyond these lines, propelled by a beat from “Worm callers” (as in “Dune”) positioned throughout the room and triggered at varying speeds via Max MSP—intertwining complex sonic processions with the sand's movement.

The moment of sand crossing the borders is recorded on video and shown as a loop on the nearby screen, emphasizing the conventional formality and even caricaturishness of the borderlines in the face of the possible global catastrophe.   

Starting from the simple rhythm of a single caller that can wake the Worm, the sound gains spatiality and volume through the inclusion of others, multiple callers, creating a complex polyrhythmic structure, gradually turning into spatial waves of chorus, reminding one of the sound of the desert wind. 

The figure of the desert wind is of utmost importance here. According to many mystical traditions associated with the desert, the desert wind signifies the spirit that brings irreversible, dramatic change to the existing order. 

Using a metaphorical language of “Dunes,” this installation gestures towards our actions  - mundane repetitions of a machinic unconsciousness routine that is leading to a catastrophe by waking the element that can erase us.

Simultaneously, by turning the pulse into a rhythmically unrecognisable choir of callers, we attempt to invoke change through a desert wind.

This machinery - a polyrhythmic percussion of mechanical callers is unobstrusively, in a manner of quiet spells, accompanied by a multichannel audio composition made solely with human voices* telling stories in different languages about their relationships with the Earth, creating an atmosphere of the post-industrial ritual in the post-human world. 

By conjuring the threads of different voices and the pulsations of mechanical devices, we aim to generate an experimental organism with juxtaposed matrices, raising the question of language as a technology that shapes our culture and ideology, thereby determining our actions. 

The stories told and heard in the desert can subtly conjure a sense of collective memory beyond time. Hinting at retroactive causality, they may invoke such reflections on the past through which, perhaps, we can influence the future or at least sense a sort of interconnectedness of all things. These ghostly voices without a presence might also serve as a sign of the possible transformation, if not the dissipation, of human subjectivity as we know it.

“One can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea”  (MichelFoucault )

* We hope to record these stories and create a corresponding composition during the residency in a conversation with the research team. 

The installation also consists of video projections employing an audio-reactive particle simulation of the desert wind, made in Unreal Engine and connected to the callers through Max MSP, so we can see the sand particles and the wind set in motion by these callers.  The projections are meant to be situated on one or more walls around the sand.

…

Reference:

Besides other things, sonically, the work refers to Ligeti’s famous piece with metronomes but reinterprets it by layering a new mythology and complex issues of our time.

…

As our experience shows, the project can be enriched by various auxiliary options and features throughout the process, leading to the emergence of some interactive elements or  additional sonic, visual, and conceptual layers.