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Underground Resistance is a seminal Detroit techno collective that has been producing music since the early 1990s. “A label for a movement”, at it’s core the outfit is run by Mike Banks with former members including internationally renowned producers Rob Hood and Jeff Mills. Sonically and politically militant in its direction, the collective has focused on themes of race relations and black power – while at the same time having an expansive outlook in celestial dreams of a universal infinite. The cosmos plays an important role in music produced by UR – with record titles such as “Galaxy 2 Galaxy”, “Interstellar Fugitives” and “DayStar Rising”.
UR maps the entire Underground Resistance catalog using images of coronal mass ejections that occurred in the year each record was released. The solar ejections are scaled by an influence metric to measure the cultural penetrance of each record.¹ The visualisation is a composite of 123 images of solar flares produced by our sun that have occurred over a 23 year period : 1990 to 2012 – sourced from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory library.²
The concept for the visualisation is a recognition of the reciprocal nature of universal influence : electromagnetic pulses bombard the earth from solar flares, while electromagnetic radio waves from earth travel at the speed of light through interstellar space. Geomagnetic pulses exploding from coronal mass ejections reach the earth on a regular basis and are known to affect biological processes. Even deep space events such as stars going supernova 100s of light years away are believed to have had profound affects on the planet – one of which resulted in a mass extinction event 65 million years ago. Conversely, it is entirely conceivable that sonic communication signals produced on planet Earth, emanating as electromagnetic waves, reach the deepest edges of the cosmos and are potentially heard by the inhabitants of other worlds.³
UR is a metaphor for celestial reciprocity – the recognition of the interconnectedness of all matter and action in the cosmos.
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Each record is scaled by a three-factor quantitative measure that is a weighted average of play count results from music streaming platforms (Youtube, Spotify and Apple Music), a monetary value rank from Discogs, and specialised music forum mentions. The various metrics compose an overall cultural influence value for each release.
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Images of the sun come from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory – a program designed to understand the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth.
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From the article Why We Keep Sending Music to Extraterrestrials : “When Carl Sagan set about designing the Voyager Golden Record, he understood humanity’s first musical interstellar message was unlikely to ever be intercepted by an extraterrestrial intelligence. Nevertheless, he recognized that ‘launching this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.’ The same holds true for all future musical interstellar messages, even if our terrestrial melodies never grace an extraterrestrial ear.”