Global Recognition of Hardi Kurda’s Music

Hardi Kurda, is a composer, sound artist, improviser, curator, and a researcher. He takes part in a wide range of projects and his daily roles give him an experience of listening to sound and music. Some of the materials he uses include; ECG monitor (2016), Recycling Object (2016), Newspaper (2018), Carpet (2017). Moreover, most of his projects are commissioned by the Department of Public Art, Gothenburg, Recherche Ensemble, Freiburg, and sometimes work in collaboration with Swedish art council, Kulturbryggan, and Goethe Institute, Germany.

Hardi’s music has been performed in Maerz Music by Adapter Ensemble Radial system v – Berlin, Sounding festival – Dublin, Goldsmiths - London, Art Museum, Gageego Ensemble and Concert house - Gothenburg. Noteworthy, Hardi’s music draws notation that stimulates performers to improvise. His music offers the listener a broader sense of how composition can transcend the limits that traditional Western practice can often place on it. In this regard, Hardi was awarded Gothenburg city culture prize in 2015. Besides, he is the curator of Space21 in Kurdistan/Iraq, and Ph.D. Candidate, at Goldsmiths, University of London. Nevertheless, Hardi is a member of The Society of Swedish Composer, and the professional association for visual artists, Berlin.

Sounding Carpet

Sounding Carpet is an interactive sound art on the divide between history, object, sound, and technology. It creates another listening experience that breaks associations with the tradition Kurdish carpet. When I visited the carpet museum in Erbil last year, it was my first time to see a Bradist Carpet. I examined the carpet in order to understand whether there was a connection between the symbols and the colours and the stories they were meant to tell. While at the Museum, I was intrigued by one symbol which looked like a human face but when I moved closer to it, its images changed into gestures that were somehow intriguing me to think about sounds. At that particular time, the carpet was not just an object on the wall. I could resonate with the gestures. When I touched the carpet, I felt the vibrations of the gestures. It was created an exotic feeling in me!

I commissioned a handmade carpet from Koya carpet factory in Kurdistan. I sent them just “the face” symbol magnified on a millimeters paper. Thereafter, I inspected the carpet using touch sensors, MaxMSP and Ableton live computer music program, with assistance from programmer Carlo Cattano. Ideally, the sound design and composition structure in sounding carpet is an interpretation of gestures and colours of “the face” symbol in the carpet.

Sounding Carpet describes practical happenings in the public. The idea is that the public uses all three senses - hearing, seeing, and feeling - through simply digging their fingertips into the “face” carpet and searching for sounds, which is an archaeological action. In this creative process, the public is the performer and listener, and they can form their own real-time sound composition (improvising) to create other stories of the carpet by sound. Listening sensitively, participants reflect on their fingers wandering among the colours, shapes, and materials of the physical handmade Kurdish sounding carpet and constructing a time portal between now and then. Ultimately, the experience between past and present creates a present where the contact between the sounding carpet and the public takes place.