John Was Trying To Contact
aliens compresses a 30-year search for extraterrestrial life and the universal human drive for connection into 16 minutes
If you were to contact extraterrestrial life, what would you say? How would you make yourself understood? What context is universal? To John Shepherd, these are more than hypotheticals; they were choices with clear and practical answers. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Shepherd conducted ambitious, bespoke solo attempts to message the unknown from his home in northern Michigan. The universal context, he decided, was non-commercial
music – Afrobeat, jazz, reggae – blasted into space through an elaborate collection of machines that resembled a spaceship slowly engulfing a cottage.
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