You stare into a reflective pool. Everything you think, feel, imagine, or remember is projected into the pool for transmission. An unknown alien species receives your message, with a wealth of others from across humankind. What do you choose to share? What do you attempt to hide? Are you inspired or horrified by the idea of these mystery recipients? This is the premise of a brief new release by Mary Pedicini and Asher Levitas. At a 2024 installation at k48 project space in Vienna, people sit around a circular mirror to approximate the experience. With the cassette release you can try this at home, a looking glass placed on the floor in your kitchen.
Speaking over ominous drones, a mechanised voice welcomes you to the inter-planetary messaging project. Disclaimers and instructions for reflecting pool number 236 are announced. Then follows a spoken monologue, part philosophical exposition, part guided meditation. Risk, wisdom, the unknown, algebra, multiplicity, the limits of perception, the power of possibility, the unreachability of the non-human: these are the subjects for consideration. The short recording acts as a prompt for our own reflective transmissions. Or, this is someone else’s reflection, overheard as it beams through space.
Fittingly, the second half of this release is a mirror image of the first. But the guided voiceover is removed. The deadpan announcement is followed by seven minutes of ambience, inviting each listener to make their own contribution. Neutral tones become gradually warmer, rays of light traced back to their source. Then come soft-focus loops of sound, with understated snippets of melody swaddled delicately in drones. Birds sing. People briefly talk, then pass by. These activities are warmly distant, comfortingly irrelevant. Whether our alien audience is hostile or paternalistic no longer seems important. You wish you could tell them everything, as you lie back into a haze of early summer, a fond childhood recollection. The reflecting pool blinks shut. The fluorescent tubes overhead seem suddenly harsh. (Samuel Rogers)
