When: Saturday, March 8, 2025, 1:00 PM - Where: The Octagon (*Geography Square entrance*), Mile End Campus
QM Innovation presents cutting-edge research and exciting new musical start-ups, alongside a special performance of Chris Watson's Namib.
Chris Watson is a master of capturing the raw, immersive sounds of nature. With decades of experience as a field recordist, his work has taken him to some of the most remote and awe-inspiring places on Earth. Namib is a stunning journey through the Namib Desert, where Watson’s field recordings transport you to this vast, otherworldly landscape. His soundscapes bring the desert to life, filling the space with the unique textures and rhythms of this extraordinary environment.
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Extending over 2,000 miles down the Atlantic coast of West and South Africa, the Namib desert is an ancient and unique landscape; a vast mobile ocean of sand where humans mostly fear to tread.
‘Namib’ is a multi-channel composition created from location recordings made over the last eight years from the Skeleton coast to remote interior dunes.
The piece reflects a timescale beyond our reckoning; it aims to compress 50 million years of evolution into a 20 minute surround soundscape.
‘Namib’ will trace the sound shift created by a dense Atlantic fog bank as it swirls inland before sunrise and transforms the acoustics around the huge sandstone outcrops along the bone dry banks of the Kuiseb river. This event brings moisture and life to the flora and fauna whilst the reduced visibility allows the listener to tune into one of the few spaces left on our planet not smeared with noise pollution.
The Namib is a place to listen back in time, above and below the surface. The piece reveals the deep rhythms and sound of an evolving sand dune, from individual grains to moving mountain as it creeps in advance of the prevailing winds.
After dark, the dunes, cliffs and valleys are patrolled by an emerging alien empire. Insects vibrate and sing into the night air – a vital and dangerous practice as advertising for a mate also sends signals to the acute auditory senses of predators, large and small, that stalk amongst the stillness of the sands. [Chris Watson, January 25th 2022]
https://chriswatson.net/2022/02/10/namib-installation-at-indexical-santa-cruz-for-touch-40-29-30th-april-2022/
All proceeds will go directly towards supporting students in the QM Music programme.