Six permanent sound installations were created for the newly opened Al Hefaiyah Wildlife Centre in the east coast Kalba mountains of Sharjah, UAE. The pieces were composed of several months of intimate wildlife recordings made by the artists of critically endangered animals, native to the Emirates and the Gulf basin.
The works approach sound with a method devised by the artists especially for the space, using a foreshortening of habitat and behaviour as a photographer would a lens. The rolling compositional style takes listeners through entire ranges of sounds made by clusters of animals illustrating the breadth of their behaviours, from nesting, to feasting. to raising an alarm.
Each listening station in the series is themed around the very private moments of these rich mammalian and amphibian creatures. Presented are the variety of sounds the animals not only make, but also live amongst. The UAE wildlife inhabit various geographies, from cold rocky mountains to plush palm oasis, to the far reaching, and potentially fatal, desert. In the centre the animals appear disjointed, behind glass. The audio animates these beasts in a parallel audio/visual experience that provokes the imagination, while at the same time presenting viewers with the actuality as a visual, creating a disjunct from which audio can uniquely profit.
BRADLEY and WEAVER 