Contact Maghen
In residency at LFO 325
Contact Maghen is an audiovisual performance on the restrictions of communication through a fictive post-human society. It follows the story of an operator tasked with filtering through and sorting stray telepathic channels lost in the underground city of Maghen. Taking place at the outset of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, this story explores an alternative technological timeline to humanityโs struggle with communication.
๐ข๐ ๐ซ๐ซ ๐๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฑ ๐ฅ๐ ๐๐ค ๐๐ฎ ๐ฃ๐จ๐ฃ ๐๐ฎ๐ธ ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฑ ๐ฎ๐ผ๐ญ ๐ซ๐จ๐ฅ๐ค
โCall your fate to judgement! Did you not summon your own life?โ
Old Babylonian sayings, tablet BM 108868, ~1600 BC
Camera - Gabriel Geneau
TIMELINE
year -250: Plutonium Crisis
year -200 to -20: Great Magnetic Pole Shifts
yea 0: Foundation of Maghen
year 20: first hive mind meditation chamber
year 100: Telekinesis discovered
year 120: B.I.T.S. (Broadband interspecies telepathic spectrum) established
year 125: First thought dissapearances
year 126: Operator recovery system instaured
CITY OF MAGHEN
It still was not understood which came first, the quadrilateral convection of the earthโs core or the imbalance of our magnetic fields. Either way, volcanic activity for decades had splurged molten iron from the earthโs mantle into the soil which became mostly barren. The atmosphere was made toxic by radiation exposure because of the weak magnetic fields, erasing almost all organic from the surface. As Earth was becoming the second red planet of the solar system, the last human beings moved underground and founded the city of Maghen. Embedded in quartz and amethyst caves, the city diffused clean light with the use of refractive crystals. Entire fields of Heem plants were planted to draw energy from the earth and the bud extracts replaced meats due to their rich iron contents.
PEOPLE OF MAGHEN
In order to adapt to the new conditions of Maghen and its limited population, the urgency of a diversified gene pool became a primary scientific concern. Three new human species were created for specific purposes, the Enki worked to build the wells, the Utu studied refractive systems and the Tusseret studied the radiowaves and magnetic poles on the surface. The Tusseret distinctively had accounted for the excess iron by weaving through their skin metal fibers that grew and died like hair, they called it Cylius Derma.
TECHNOLOGY OF MAGHEN
From meditation chambers, to telepathic communication and astral EMF generators, the technology of Maghen tended towards spiritual development and was even considered organic, reserved mostly for sacred tasks. One of the greatest threats in the city of Maghen was for the B.I.T.S. to be corrupted or distorted, losing a thought or a memory that could perturb its sender for life. In order to prevent this the Tusseret created the Red Earth Satellites (R.E.S.) and worked at retrieving, sorting and saving the hive mindโs stray data from erasure.
GLOSSARY
Heem plant: derived from the word hemeglobin as the molecule that binds oxygen to the bloodstream. This plant was the center of Maghenโs nutrition and energy source, being able to draw energy from the earthโs core using complex magnetic configurations.
Paramagnetic disease: Animals and humans that had a strong magnetic sense perished, their organisms were not able to resolve the disharmony caused by the magnetic instability.
Cylius (Topical Conduction): Developped by the Tusseret to navigate the surfaceโs unstable magnetic fields.
Nexi: Neighborhoods and spaces built upon solar patterns with magnetic architects using a combination of conductive and insulating materials to facilitate alpha electron flow.
