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This is an article about wind, dust, and their relations to life. It is a meditation on the liveliness of wind and airborne particles as they are experienced on the ground; in cultural texts including film, poetry, and oral history; and in the medium of satellite imagery. In dialogue with recent work in the social sciences and humanities that demonstrates how air and dust from the "South" are treated as foreign "intrusions" into Europe, this article proposes a focus on wind's animacies to further probe and nuance these claims. Situated primarily in Italy and the Balkans, two places where the author has familial relations and, in the case of the Balkans, deep ancestral history, the animacies of wind are examined specifically in relation to Scirocco and Jugo, two interrelated southerly winds commonly blowing in spring and autumn that sometimes bring "Saharan dust" to Europe. As a framework and scaffold, the article draws from Mel Chen's notion of "differential animacies": the ways animacy is bestowed on humans, animals, elements, and objects in hierarchies that are both revealing and "leaky." Exploring the animacies of Scirocco and Jugo shows how the wind acts as a force of de/humanization, as agency leaking across borders of life and nonlife, and as shape-shifting coauthor of collective memory.

"What do we really hear when we hear the wind? If you step from a wood into an open field, the sound changes, although it is the same wind blowing over both. A winter pine tree far from the coast makes the wind perform like an angry sea, while a neighbouring bare birch makes a gust-like sound as soft as the brushings of a jazz drummer. A single blast can turn telephone cables and barbed wire fencing into the strings of a wind-harp."

"Sixteen bottles, each with its own air blower, stand arranged in a circle playing music. For his piece, and the wind was like the regret for what is no more, artist João Costa brings the wind indoors, translating its wild energy into simple sounds. "The work explores the interaction of two invisible factors, sound and wind," explains Costa in the video's description. "It deals with the dialectics of scattered and shapeless coefficients that cannot be seen, but have an intrinsic need of existence, of being, and nothing more. To articulate these elements is to deal with the unknown, the unpredictable.""

TELEPRESENCE WIND by David Bowen - This installation consists of a series of 42 x/y tilting devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in the gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows, it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting it in real-time to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

"Sixteen bottles, each with its own air blower, stand arranged in a circle playing music. For his piece, and the wind was like the regret for what is no more, artist João Costa brings the wind indoors, translating its wild energy into simple sounds. "

"Some conduct musicians - Pierre Sauvageot conducts the wind. He explains why his startling land art is as carefully composed as any symphony"

"Exclusively composed with/from recordings of bees in the Olivier Darné's hives, located in Saint-Denis, suburb of Paris Going over bee, ears in the wind, we feel the density of real and also throw ourself into this dance of oscillations. From the site specific installation, commissioned by Les Instants Chavirès (France) for La Brasserie Bouchoule during Lieux Communs festival 2007"

"I'm quite late hearing this for the first time, but I was thrilled to discover composer Pierre Sauvageot's Harmonic Fields project, a participatory landscape of wind-activated musical instruments temporarily installed on the beach near Birkrigg Common, Cumbria, England. The haphazard plinks, drum rolls, whistles and drones is often mesmerizingly beautiful, as the following video makes clear. It's a kind of weather plug-in, constructed as a sequence of very different movements in space."

"When I visited Ameland this summer I was surprised by the sounds I heard on the beach. Wind was blowing hard and played the ropes of the sailboats' masts. I love to encounter those sounds, it's like the elements are playing rhythms too complex for me to understand. But you can also help the wind a little by building some instruments. That's what Pierre Sauvageot did with his Harmonic Fields sound installation. Wouldn't it be magical to suddenly hear these wonderful sounds while walking in the dunes?"

"20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz. Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception"

"Bernie Krause has been recording wild soundscapes -- the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, the subtle sounds of insect larvae -- for 45 years. In that time, he has seen many environments radically altered by humans, sometimes even by practices thought to be environmentally safe. A surprising look at what we can learn through nature's symphonies, from the grunting of a sea anemone to the sad calls of a beaver in mourning. "

"Winds blowing across snow dunes on Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf cause the massive ice slab's surface to vibrate, producing a near-constant drumroll of seismic tones. Video: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego."

"The noise sounds like wind, or heavy rain, or the steady hum of an airline jet. It sounds like water rushing somewhere in the distance, like a gentle fan ruffling currents of cool air. It's soothing, steady, slightly rumbly. Welcome to the cult of BROWN NOISE, a sometimes hazily-defined category of neutral, dense sound that contains every frequency our ears can detect. Brown noise is like white noise but has a lower, deeper quality. It gained a fervent following over the summer, picking up speed in online A.D.H.D. communities, where people made videos of their reactions to hearing it for the first time. Many said it allowed their brains to feel calm, freed from an internal monologue. Some invited their viewers to try it too, and commenters chimed in, claiming that brown noise was not only a tool to help them focus, but could relieve stress and soothe them to sleep."

"The first audio recordings on Mars reveal a quiet planet with occasional gusts of wind where two different speeds of sound would have a strange delayed effect on hearing, scientists said Friday."

"Ugnayan consists of twenty separate 51-minute tracks, each to be played back on a different radio station. The idea was then to have everyone in Manila tune in to a different radio station so that all of the tracks would play back simultaneously, each from a different source. This is a stereo mix of the original tracks, recorded by Maceda and a small group in 1973, using mostly traditional Philippine instruments. Masses of layered percussion and wind sounds build up in short passages and are supplanted by new ones. There's an abundance of bamboo sound, either struck or blown, and a lot of harmonic information happening. This piece (and Maceda's work in general) is important because it attempts to bring together elements of traditional folk music and "avant-garde" composition, and they do it in the public arena. These are not just dusty academic endeavors, they were and are lively examples of other ways that music and sound can be integrated into everyday life. -Jeph Jerman, squidsear"

Weather for the blind is a live streaming site of a musical instrument which is played by the weather. The base station - pictured in the foreground - is called Weather Warlock and is located in New Orleans Louisiana. The weather sensors - pictured in the distant surf - are mounted to a post and detect temperature, wind, sun, and rain. This all analog synthesizer produces a wide range of tones and harmonics based around a consonant E major chord with special audio events occurring during sunrise and sunset. Occasionally our streaming will be down. If that is the case, please visit the ARCHIVES to enjoy past weather entries."

"For the past five decades, in a Guatemala City studio, 85-year-old sound artist Joaquín Orellana has been building unusual, sculptural útiles sonoros, or "sound utensils." Some look like marimbas curved into miniature roller coasters; others look like sets of wind chimes designed by Alexander Calder."

"The tranquil chorus of the natural world is in danger of being lost to today's generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns. Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water, and trees rustling in the wind, which can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service"

"For Jason Achilles Mezilis, a musician and record producer who has also worked for NASA, listening to the haunting Martian wind was an emotional experience."

"Sound is everywhere in tropical forests. Rain drips from water-slicked leaves, birds screech, monkeys titter and bellow, branches crack, wind moans, and insects chirp and buzz. Vibrations pierce the humid understory and echo through the airy canopy, creating a symphony of sounds that speaks to both artist and scientist. Monacchi is harvesting artistic inspiration as well as data. The chirps and rattles contain information about how species interact with the environment and each other, as well as the health of the habitat. Sometimes Monacchi uses his recordings to inspire the public, sometimes to inform ecological research. "I'm trying to be at the edge of both worlds," he says."