about the record

Desert Dictionary navigates sonic territories oscillating between language and landscape, between notation and noise. Voices respond and contribute to a complementary narrative, connecting personal memories, political considerations, and the psychological effects of a landscape that seems both empty and quiet. Adjacent, beneath, and intertwined is a modular synthesizer score based on field notes—a synthesized soundscape that appears as imaginary field recordings, simultaneously resembling and diverging from the place in question.

Appearing in four iterations, the work spans a situation within Modern Art Projects South Africa’s collection, a radio play commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, a book edition published by MAPSA, and an album released by arbitrary.

The album, rooted in the radio play, features the voices of Richard John Forbes, Maja Marx, Phala Ookeditse Phala, Victoria Wigzell, Tubatsi Mpochmoloi, Liza Grobler, Nkosinathi Gumede, Karlien van Rooyen, Mongezi Ncombo, Ivan Messelaar, Gerhard Marx, and Lindiwe Matshikiza.

Synthesized field recordings—translations of field notes taken in the desert—were recorded in Johannesburg and Berlin.