As soon as Systems for a Score, the first sound-art solo exhibition in Dubai, opened last month at Tashkeel, the sound artists Fari Bradley and Chris Weaver began using one of the main exhibits for their next project.
A Model Studio, the central installation in their show, was used to record several tracks that the artists later laid down for an LP – which will be released by the UK organisation The Vinyl Factory at Art Dubai next month. Bradley and Weaver are currently on a year-long artist residency as part of Tashkeel's Guest Artist Programme.
As a starting point for the recording sessions, they found inspiration in sadu, a traditional Emirati weave, which, with its block-like patterns and shapes, resembles digital midi data. Midi data is a kind of musical language for digital equipment – sending messages to the machine that specify notation, pitch and velocity and can also control volume or synchronise tempo.
Using the patterns from the weave, the artists produced musical scores, which were then used as a base for the sounds on their tracks.
Much of the rest was up to their collaborators, who varied from an entire class from Rashid School for Boys who spent time in the studio breaking sticks, to musicians and amateur singers who were asked to freestyle into the microphone.
The sounds on the album vary from the abstract meanderings of Faissal el-Malak, whom the artists asked to freestyle with his vocals, humming to himself in the studio, which they later laid down over a track, to the musician Mounia Hajji, who played the oud. While some of the music was conceptual, some was more traditional, such as a Khaleeji song by Jaber Al Maket on rababa and vocals.
The idea was to capture the energy of the city and the country, through the visitors to the exhibition.
“It is pitched to people who are not in the UAE, who haven’t been here before and don’t know much about the East,” explains Bradley.
The album takes the same name as the exhibition, which an attempt to construct a “possible grammar of sound art”, they say in their artists’ statement.
This meant using visual aids such as the sadu weave and other installations, such as a giant mound of salt in which speakers were buried; the speakers were working their way out of the mound as the sound played through them slowly shifted the grains of salt on top of them.
“We are just trying to explain what we hear,” says Bradley. “We are so used to writing graphic scores for orchestras based around shapes and lines and colours that people can interpret as music, so for people who don’t know music we want to show that there is still a way for you to see patterns and rhythms.”
“The art of sound is more slippery than visual culture,” says Weaver. “There are no obvious handholds with it, so part of this exhibition is about whether it is important in art to have visual references.”
• Chris Weaver and Fari Bradley finish their Tashkeel residency in April
• Art Dubai runs from March 18-21. For more information, visit www.artdubai.ae
aseaman@thenational.ae