PHOTOS: ISTVAN VIRAG (C) PUNKT Ø / MOMENTUM 9
John Duncan (US)
The Nazca Transmissions (2009)
Since the early 1970s, John Duncan has created a unique body of work combining experimental music, theatre performance, and conceptual art, challenging expectations and expanding perceptions. The Nazca Transmissions are based on recordings by the German archaeologist Anton Düder at the famous Nazca Lines, a series of large geoglyphs in the Nazca Desert in Peru, which by some are believed to be the work of an alien civilization capable of intergalactic travel. Accompanied by meticulous scientific data for each track Düder sent the recordings to Duncan. Düder was fascinated with Duncan’s prior use of infrasonic field recordings from the Australian coastline and believed he could do similar artistic justice to his Nazca recordings. The resulting musical composition by Duncan, consisting of eye-quivering sub-bass pulses, shrill, filigree hi-end tones, shortwave blasts and tectonic creaks, unfolds a soundscape by inhabited those dimensions of planetary life that will most likely forever remain a mesmerizing mystery, alien.
