The Sand Project is an ongoing artistic investigation by the artists Birkbeck & Duffy into phenomena associated with sand.
‘Singing Sand, Somewhere Close to Us’
is the first in a series of collaborative exhibitons concerned with
the visual and aural re-imagining of ‘dune song’, the sound
emitted by sand during avalanches.
“Somewhere, close to us, in an undefined direction, a drum
was beating, the mysterious drum of the dunes; it was beating distinctly,
sometimes more vibrating, sometimes weakened, stopping, then taking
again its fantastic bearing."
Guy de Maupassant (1883)
Using the language of the writer and explorer as a starting point, the
works created examine this enduring phenomenon that has captivated travellers
for thousands of years with its seemingly supernatural song and has
since become an ongoing controversial area of scientific study.
