Sometimes I read something about people I have never heard of before and I spontaneously think: wouldn’t it be cool to meet that person? This was certainly true when I encountered the article below, describing Lotte Geeven, a Dutch artist who is passionate about making a concert out of samples of singing sand collected from around the world. The idea alone is ingenious – focussing an audience’s attention on sound that is natural by source (and rare) but now delivered in manufactured fashion – however she plans to do that.

The preparation for such an undertaking involves figuring out where these sands can be found, how people can be approached to send them, and of course how to re-create the sound once the sand is in your possession.

If you click on the short video embedded in the article you can see the process first hand – how she writes to strangers, how they respond, how so much depends on simple kindness and willingness to do the unusual for the sake of art.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/artist-crowdsourcing-sand-around-world-recreate-sound-singing-deserts-180966966/

For the mechanically inclined, here are some sketches of her “instruments.”

 https://hyperallergic.com/394661/lotte-geeven-sand-machines/

Here is a sound sample from our own “backyard,” sand dunes in Death Valley who sing during the summer (at 118 degrees…)

Here they are in Liwa (UAE) close to Saudi Arabia

You can find them in China, Mongolia, Scotland (apparently…) and you can find stand-ins at the beach and the Portland Zoo.

The sands there don’t sing, but I needed photographs for this blog so the elephants’ play ground came in handy. When I went there last week to take these pictures I happened to be in time for the elephant training/feeding session. Thus you get a bonus picture of an elephant’s mouth in all its pink detail….

Maybe singing elephants are next.

She doesn’t think so….