To most ears, the desert might seem like a place of silence.
But for artist Ammar Khammash the nature of Jordan is filled with music. And now he’s taking the sounds directly from nature to the public of Amman.
Desert Sound Instrument by Ammar Khammash from Ammar Khammash on Vimeo.
Khammash’s installation Secret Sounds of the Desert is a huge musical instrument made entirely of flints found in the desert. The stones are attached to the xylophone as they’re found: Khammash doesn’t manipulate their shape in any way. But they produce musical notes to precision: so perfectly, in fact, that the instrument plays tuneful music.
His installation, which runs in Amman’s Design Week, is open to the public in the city’s downtown area.
Khammash writes in the Jordan Times that driving through the desert, the tires crunching on the flint, is “like a continuous keyboard of a strange musical instrument”.
Are there one thousand dismantled pianos scattered for miles? An eternal melody in this remote land? At the Design Week, visitors enjoyed playing tunes on the desert xylophone, and tweeted their admiration for the piece too.
It's rarely that you see something this surreal. Watch: a sound made of the Jordanian desert. Beautiful concept. https://t.co/UALh4n9tOy
— Murád (@MuradSays) 30 August 2016
The event will be running in Amman until September 9.
