David Sanchez Burr - Redshift LP - pressing of 50.
David began his experimental sound and visual work in Richmond, Virginia while studying at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has exhibited and performed his work widely at museums, art centers, cultural spaces, and many non-traditional venues and locations nationally and internationally. He started playing in punk bands (most notably Hell Mach Four) and recording shortwave radio sounds since he was 14.
"To embark on this project, I considered potential thematic ideas and my thoughts wandered to the furthest outpost of human technology, the voyager spacecraft. Always fascinated by distant things I thought of the voyager vessels and the golden records to represent our human curiosity for things unknown. I found connective tissue between AI and the Voyager program, both reaching out to the furthest extent. One carrying a record containing information about us in the 1970’s to the furthest reaches, while the other taking all our information to similarly expansive places, both with unknown destinations. At this point the project became Redshift, a term in astrophysics that describes how we know when distant objects are getting further away from us in the expanding universe. The golden record was created as an exercise to describe humankind to an alien species should the voyager spacecraft be found in the future. Even if the possibilities of this happening were remote in the most absolute terms, our scientists led by Carl Sagan did not forget to dream and to hope that aliens may someday find out that we existed. Now it seems most likely that the first sentient species that we encounter will be one of our own making, AI.
In describing the sounds of this project I think of a ping-pong match, instead of a ping pong ball it is a snippet of MIDI data, as the AI swings the paddle the snippet gets slightly more complex each hit further evolving into textured, melody, rhythm, percussion, and chaos. Each passing of data between the AI and myself becomes a moment of intuition and reaction, the buildup and outcome evolves over time and is not preconceived. Another way to describe this process is to think about Close Encounters of The Third Kind, at the end of the movie and when humans finally meet the aliens, scientists devise a sonic call and response process to communicate with them. Each turn becomes more complex, eventually becoming a language unto itself. I also used samples from the golden record, magnetic fields, the “wow” signal and various exploratory spacecraft and observatory recordings.
I wanted to create my own language with AI; in this I partially succeeded. Who knows how long Magenta will be around, is there a place for dead AI? I think that Magenta was created intentionally or not with notions of what is possible rather than what is marketable, I hope it finds a permanent home.
It has been over 25 years since I released a vinyl record. In the past I made editions with hand-made covers. I thought that this edition should be no different, every record cover is slightly different and unique, this is different form serialized production and therefore more art than product. The tracks on this record are presented live with a sculptural sound installation in which I employed quadrophonic sound and the ability for users to modify the soundscape in real-time. The installation was inspired by the golden records, the voyager program and visually presents the inherent struggles of humanity with the unknown." - David Sanchez Burr
