Routes
Routes is a work in progress started in 2017.
This piece is a visual and musical representation of refugees travelling into Europe over the past decade, based on existing, painstakingly collected data covering routes coming into Europe.
Using an algorithmic program (Supercollider), note samples from traditional instruments of North/East Africa and the Middle East (oud, ney, qanun etc) based on a maqam (a melodic mode used in Arabic and related forms of music) and country of origin are linked with data indicating the location coordinates of disappearance or death when crossing from Africa or the Middle East into Europe generating a musical marking of those lost and forgotten.
Routes attempts to illuminate ideas of loss (of traditional musical craft and culture through conflict and loss of individual lives), queries the notion of memory (colonial, collective and individual) and questions our status as global citizens at a time when the UK seems determined to turn away, shut its borders and look inward in perpetuity.
Routes is a work in progress started in 2017.
This piece is a visual and musical representation of refugees travelling into Europe over the past decade, based on existing, painstakingly collected data covering routes coming into Europe.
Using an algorithmic program (Supercollider), note samples from traditional instruments of North/East Africa and the Middle East (oud, ney, qanun etc) based on a maqam (a melodic mode used in Arabic and related forms of music) and country of origin are linked with data indicating the location coordinates of disappearance or death when crossing from Africa or the Middle East into Europe generating a musical marking of those lost and forgotten.
Routes attempts to illuminate ideas of loss (of traditional musical craft and culture through conflict and loss of individual lives), queries the notion of memory (colonial, collective and individual) and questions our status as global citizens at a time when the UK seems determined to turn away, shut its borders and look inward in perpetuity.