Project Sideral and the Music of Cosmic Animism

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.