Project Sideral and the Music of Cosmic Animism

Authors

  • Reynaldo Thompson
  • Tirtha Mukhopadhyay

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29147/dat.v5i1.172

Keywords:

Acoustic, Electrophonic, Magnetic, Meteorite, Sidereal

Abstract

Project Sideral was developed by artists Marcela Armas and Gilberto Esparza, as another addition to a series of extraordinary electrophonic sculptures they exhibited since Esparza’s award-winning Golden Nica piece of 2015. In its basic outline, the Conception-Adargas, which is the title of the work emanating out of Project Sideral, uses a 3.3 tons meteor, which impacted the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, and was found in 1786 and then preserved at the ‘Astronomy Institute’ of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. The magnetic field on the surface of the meteorite is detected and translated into sounds which recreate the far out harmonies of Buchla’s dream easel, in modes similar to Stockhausen’s Licht, or Pauline Oliveros’s contemplative chants, but which more importantly, Armas and Esparza’s companion Daniel Llermaly transform in terms of the indigenous Tarahumara music, a similar frequency known to peoples of the region on which the meteorite impacted.

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References

1 Sitsky, Larry. Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook: A Biocritical Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO, 2002.Taylor, Timothy D. “The gendered construction of the musical self: The music of Pauline Oliveros.” The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1993): 385-396.

2 Ochoa-Zezzatti, Alberto, Julio Ponce, Arturo Hernández, Sandra Bustillos, Francisco Ornelas, and Consuelo Pequeño. “Traditional Rarámuri Songs used by a Recommender System to a Web Radio.” Special issue: Natural Language Processing and its Applications: 243.

3 Trías, Eugenio. “El canto de las sirenas.” Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg (2010).

4 Tirtha Mukhopadhyay and Reynaldo Thompson. EcoCybers: The Story of Digital Art in San Miguel De Allende. http://www.idmaajournal.org/2015/11/ecocybers-the-story-of-digital-art-in-san-miguel-de-allende/ retrieved 5th January 2020

5 Szanto, Ted. “Extended vocal techniques.” Journal of New Music Research 6, no. 3-4 (1977): 113-115.

6 Marcela, Armas. Tatiana Cuevas, Matthew Hall, Jens Hauser, Karla Jasso, Jose-Carlos Mariategui. Jessica Riskin. Lima: Peru. Espacio Fundación Telefónica. Also based on personal interview dated 3rd January 2018.

7 Marcela, Armas. Tatiana Cuevas, Matthew Hall, Jens Hauser, Karla Jasso, Jose-Carlos Mariategui. Jessica Riskin. Lima: Peru. Espacio Fundación Telefónica. Also based on personal interview dated 3rd January 2018.

Published

2020-03-26

How to Cite

Thompson, R., & Mukhopadhyay, T. (2020). Project Sideral and the Music of Cosmic Animism. DAT Journal, 5(1), 88–98. https://doi.org/10.29147/dat.v5i1.172