Sounding the Farm

Sounding the Farm is an environmental sound installation by Zemzemeh, created from recordings gathered on farms in Doon Doon and across the Tweed region. Cattle calls, birdsong, insects, gates, footsteps, wind, water, machinery, and the subtle pulse of daily labour are reimagined through spatial audio, looping, layering, live Persian instruments, and electro-acoustic transformation.

Presented through a multi-speaker system surrounding the audience, the work invites listeners to sit or lie down, close their eyes, and enter an acoustic landscape where distance, movement, memory, and place are carried by sound. Moments of realism dissolve into abstraction; the familiar becomes musical, intimate, and strange.

Often seen but rarely listened to, farmland holds a rich sonic ecology. Sounding the Farm reveals these hidden textures, asking us to hear rural life not as background, but as a living conversation between humans, animals, weather, and earth.