To create ‘in clean air we fly’, artist Kaffe Matthews collaborated with 40 children from Shacklewell and Colvestone primary schools in Dalston to explore the possibilities of city transport without pollution and its related health and environmental effects. Together they investigated the local streets, identifying the air pollution hotspots and mapping the results at both street and sky levels to build a musical score from the local airspace. The children recorded neighbourhood street sounds, played instruments and wrote songs also exploring the tones of the ancient Solfeggio series which Matthews has combined to create one shifting multilayered audio work.

The installation was Invisible Dust’s inaugural event and took place the day before the United Nations Climate Change conference opened in Copenhagen. ‘in clean air we fly’ saw over 600 cyclists power the eight-channel electronic symphony sound installation for nine hours, using a system provided by the creative ecologists Magnificent Revolutions, to an audience of over 1000 members of the public.

Image: © Kaffe Matthews, In Clean Air We Fly, Gillet Square, Dalston, London, December 2009. Photo Christopher Ferstad.