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"It's a sonic phenomenon that occurs in only certain pockets of desert around the world. The sound of sand grains shuffling down hot slopes that can recall the angry buzz of bees or the deep, groaning thrums of a didgeridoo group. Scientists refer to these shifting dunes as "singing" or "booming" sands, which for centuries mystified explorers from Charles Darwin to Marco Polo. We know now that these strange sounds are caused by the vibrations of grains avalanching, at relatively slow speeds, down dunes, and that the grain size and speed influence the notes of these curious hums of nature."

"In 1999, composer/sound artist Steve Peters undertook a project at The Land, a venue for site-specific environmental art in the high desert of central New Mexico. Wishing to develop an intimate relationship with the site rather than impose his own noise upon it, he devoted himself to the act of listening to the sounds that were there during each hour of the day and night over the course of one year. Spanning the disciplines of acoustic ecology, environmental and performance art, poetry, sculpture, installation, and contemplative practice, Here*ings documents that experience of immersion in a particular landscape, examining the gradual process of becoming connected with Place. In sharing his findings, Peters encourages us to offer our own attention to the subtle poetry that surrounds us. His work reminds us that, beneath the surface of the commonplace, the extraordinary lies waiting to be revealed."

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is a state-of-the-art radio telescope developed and operated by 20 countries and territories in East Asia, Europa and North America in cooperation with the Republic of Chile. Connecting 66 parabola antennas deployed in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, ALMA works as a giant radio telescope with a diameter comparable to the size of the Yamanote Line. ALMA detects faint radio waves emanated by distant celestial objects to study the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars, and planets. Obtaining a clue to the origin of life is another goal of ALMA. In 2011, ALMA observed radio waves from a dying star "R Sculptoris." The ALMA MUSIC BOX made use of this data, and translated the 70 different radio images onto 70 musical discs.

"Is Jeanne Dielmans' apartment on 23, quai du Commerce in Brussels a haunted house? It might well be. Because the dwelling where most of Chantal Akerman's 1975 masterpiece is set is often eerily deserted, with only the distant sounds of shuffling feet and clanging keys filling its hallways. As the camera waits for the titular protagonist to arrive (or lingers after she has left), the rooms are reduced to echo chambers. Jeanne Dielman is disembodied, a ghost even in her own domestic realm. Her visual absence in these moments represents quite literally the invisibility of her plight: a life lived in the shadows, a fate suffered just around a corner, conveniently out of view for the rest of society."

""I watched a great horned owl sitting on a saguaro cactus," Mr. Wheeler, 77, an amateur pilot, said last week at the museum. "And when it took off, it was just amazing. There was no sound, at least nothing I can describe as sound, but just a kind of almost imperceptible percussiveness in the air.""

"What does it sound like to look for a lost loved one? This art installation doesn't look away from the horror and pain of that reality. At University Museum Contemporary Art in Mexico City last year, multiple speakers wrapped visitors in a sonic collage, recorded from a group of civilians, made up of mostly women, who search the desert for "clandestine graves" of missing loved ones."

"You can look across a vast expanse of ice, all white and blue and cold, and see nothing. The lead is choked with pack ice or sealed over with newly formed ice, and there is no movement or sound. With few birds, no whales and no bears, one might mistake the Arctic for a desert. But if you go down to the ice edge, pick a hole in the new ice deep enough to reach water and drop in a hydrophone (an underwater microphone), the cacophony is astonishing. "

"n Pursuit of Silence is a meditative film about silence, our relationship with sound, and the impact of noise on our lives. In our race towards modernity, amidst all the technological innovation and the rapid growth of our cities, silence is now quickly passing into legend. From the Desert Fathers of the third century AD who became the model for Christian monasticism to John Cage's seminal work 4'33" which would go onto inspire a generation of artists, humankind has had a long fascination with silence. In Pursuit of Silence will be the first comprehensive look at this topic whose many dimensions lie at the heart of so much of human progress. Offering audiences a contemplative cinematic experience, the sights and sounds of this film will work its way through frantic minds, into the quiet spaces of hearts, and help shape a new vision of being."