Terms

The Artifact
An object made by human hands; in signal processing, a distortion introduced by recording or processing that was not in the source.

Astronautical
Of or relating to travel beyond Earth's atmosphere, where contact is kept only by radio signal.

Bauhaus
Conceptually, the abstraction of a unified system. This painting sets itself against that idea.

Blueshift
A decrease in wavelength, and so a rise in frequency, in waves from a source moving toward the observer.

Cathedral
A bishop's principal church; a stone interior where sound can linger for several seconds after its source has stopped.

DMT
Dimethyltryptamine, the drug, also known as the God molecule.

Echoes
Waves reflected off a surface and returned after a delay, at the same frequency but with less strength.

Escape Velocity
The minimum speed needed to break free of a body's gravity. A signal climbing out of that same gravity arrives at a lower frequency.

Heavy Rotation
In radio, the songs on a station's playlist that are played at the highest frequency.

High Jazz
The highest, most avant-garde form of jazz.

Phalene
After “Phalene I,” a jazz recording by Marc Moulin with Placebo.

Phase No. 1
Phase is a wave's position within its cycle. Two waves of the same frequency can reinforce or cancel each other, depending on their phase.

Redshift
An increase in wavelength, and so a drop in frequency, in waves from a source moving away from the observer.

Sound Directions
After Madlib's Yesterdays New Quintet album Presents Sound Directions (2005).

Sun Ra
See A Joyful Noise (Robert Mugge, 1980).

A Thousand Birds
After “A Thousand Birds,” The Alchemist with Conway and Westside Gunn, from The Good Book, Vol. 2 (2017), made with Budgie.

Thought Interrupted
A continuous signal broken before it finishes.

Tunebox
A machine that selects and plays tunes; to tune is to set an instrument or receiver to a given frequency.

Wavelengths
The distance between one crest of a wave and the next. The shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency.