Sixteen sound traps, each representing a phrase from the Adhan. The dimensions of each trap correspond to the length of the breath, frequency, and melody of the phrase.
The adhan’s form is characterized by contrast and contains twelve melodic passages which move from one to another tonal center of one maqam.

These phrases are from 21 countries across Eastern Arabia, East Africa, Yemen, and coastal South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh). These lands are places where traveling dhows traditionally sailed in parallel for trade and Hajj travel.

An ode to those who travelers across oceans; the work echos the beat of each phrase of the adhan in the resonance of ocean waves, trickling water, and wind. an ode to those crossing seas and oceans, answering a calling to act on faith.

I wanted to for this work to be a gift, or more of a calling to my ancestors, although I may never resolve the mystery of their migration, family dynamic, and why we left the sea behind us, in desperation, I lie, I make a fictive signal at the Hajj Terminal, a machine collecting sounds of the adhan’s resonance through the red sea, and encoding it into distances to inform their route.


Form and Position:
Oblong spheres represent width of sound, High-frequency sounds is placed higher, while low-frequency sounds is represented by larger shapes placed lower, a method of visualizing sound in space called sound imaging.

Every Adhan consists of 15 phrases, 7 of them are repeated twice except for the last phase.

The database consists of 23 Adhans from countries across Eastern Arabia, East Africa, Yemen and coastal South Asia (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh).

Each Adhan is cut into parts/phrases, and then analysed to extract the following variables:
_ Breath length
_ Musical note/ Frequency


In sound:
Taking the underlying melodies and tunes of the eight maqamat of the Adhan, isolating the ebbs and flows of the breaths in its recitation, hearing the Adhan sound as waves of the ocean.
This process was in collaboration with the very talented Egyptian producer DIJIT


In color:
Each trap in the installation, which is essentially a graph in space, is identified by a colored band that
corresponds to the frequency color along the spectrum.


Shaped like fishing traps traditionally used for fishing in the eastern region of Saudi, suspended spheres and oblongs almost like sound catchers, by the sea shore, listening, trapping the sound of calling to action that echoed five times a day for more than fourteen thousand years.