Brian Duffy talks about using the cosmic and qawaali sounds to create Silsila

Artists Tasawar Bashir and Brian Duffy, working with astrophysicist Tim O’Brien, present Silsila, a qawwali-inspired sound installation based on the epic Sufi poem Conference of the Birds, commissioned especially for Asia Triennial Manchester 11. Silsila will be installed at the University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre in the shadow of the world-famous Lovell Radio Telescope.

Researching a wide range of wavelengths, an endless musical algorithm will translate data sourced from stellar events such as, cosmic background noise, star formation, pulsars, solar plasma, and light from galaxy clusters, and combine it with the voice of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, arguably the greatest qawwali singer of the modern era. This installation will further develop ideas from Brian Duffy’s earlier project The Optophonic Lunaphone, a device that changed starlight into music.