Middle East PhoNographic Mornings #01/15
Each Morning of the World #10
The Edge of the World ~ Riyadh ~ Saudi Arabia
 24.9451828,45.9909415 
« The Edge of the World »
Stuart Fowkes
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This is a recording taken shortly after sunrise at a stunning natural feature called The Edge of the World, which is about 90 minutes’ drive outside Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. You need to arrive there just after sunrise in order for the heat to be passably tolerable - even at around 7am, the temperature was up at around 38 or 39 degrees. Despite its incredible natural beauty, the site receives few tourists, because there are still very few tourists in the country (and this recording was taken before tourist visas even existed). That means it’s completely unspoilt, and you are there on your own to look out at the immensity of the desert in front of you, and gaze down at the sheer 300 metre drop from the cliffs. It’s a rare chance to enjoy an unspoilt moment of natural wonder, with no car traffic, human voices or aircraft to interrupt the sounds, just a drifting hot wind over the microphone, and whatever sounds I made as I moved slightly among the sand and stones.


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Stuart Fowkes
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Stuart Fowkes, a sound artist and field recordist from Oxford, UK, is the founder of Cities and Memory.
From a background of more than ten years using field recordings to give context to musical composition, he created Cities and Memory in 2014.
He has recorded many of the field recordings and produced many of the project’s reimagined sounds, and curates contributions to and collaborations with the project from all over the world.
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Cities and Memory
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Cities and Memory is a global collaborative sound project encompassing field recording, sound art and sound mapping – remixing the world, one sound at at time.
Every location on the Cities and Memory sound map features two sounds: the original field recording of that place, and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new.
The listener can explore places through their actual sounds, to explore reimagined versions of what those places could be – or to flip between the two different sound worlds at leisure.

Cities and Memory has been exhibited in a series of installations both in the UK and internationally, and Stuart has spoken on sound and related issues at conferences across Europe.
Cities and Memory is also an active live performance, performing highlights from the project with live visuals.

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www.citiesandmemory.com /
@citiesandmemory 
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