I started gathering the video images for Apparent Horizon six years prior to its completion. My original intent was to slowly reveal information in various landscapes by holding still on an image for several seconds, then zooming in or out or panning to reveal more detail, an unusual vista, rock formation, etc. It occurred to me that it also might be interesting to see what might be "revealed" from an overhead view. Since it was impractical to rent airplanes for this purpose, I decided to incorporate NASA footage taken by the Space Shuttle and Apollo series astronauts. It is at times difficult to distinguish earth views from space from those taken on the earth's surface.
Many of the earthbound shots are of rather "alien" landscapes - those where I, as a human being, don't really fit in - I'm the alien here. In these often desolate places the only sounds one hears are wind, insects, a scant number of birds and animals and a rare rainstorm. I decided to take our constant human chatter and transpose it into sounds somewhat reminiscent of nature's sounds in the landscapes to which they are attached or to transform them into somewhat "otherworldly" sounds. This was an attempt to convey an aural impression of the sensa tions I imagine the astronauts might experience while viewing the earth from space. Sounds sources consisted of transmissions from/through space and were from Space Shuttle and Apollo missions, satel lite transmissions, and shortwave radio broadcasts. Often I chose sections that were full of static and distortion - signals which were reaching unintel-ligibility. There are Morse Code "crickets" at Bryce Canyon and static "rain" at the Canyonlands.

Maggi Payne (USA) obtained music degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, and Mills College. For ten years she was a recording engineer in the multitrack facilities at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills, and she was a production engineer at a major Bay Area Radio Station for ten years. She now freelances as a recording engineer and editor.