Media & Press

What People Are Saying About Marsification

From exploring Antarctica by foot to exploring space by space probes, I’ve witnessed how we romanticize the red planet while taking for granted the blue one. Marsification captures that tension in sound: dreamy, chilling, and unflinchingly honest. It’s an immersive sonic voyage that exposes the fragility of planetary fantasies built on capitalist ambition.

Ariel Waldman, Antarctic explorer and NASA advisor

A timely exploration of the future the would-be Space Emperors of Silicon Valley have planned, meeting a historical moment when the mask is most definitely slipping.

Dr. Martin Austwick, musician, podcaster (Neutrinowatch, Song by Song, The Allusionist) and former research physicist

Marsification is a necessary and beautiful intervention into the tech-bro led paradigm of what our rights and roles are with regards to the red planet, and how this galactic paradigm serves as a stark mirror to our rights and roles here on Earth. A powerful meander through various mediums reflecting on our systems (both natural and contrived) here on Earth through the question of Mars.

Eleanor Goldfield, Project Censored Radio and filmmaker

Marsification says as much through words as it does through music, soundscape, tone, and genre breaking. Blew me away.

Willi Lempert, Professor of Anthropology focusing on space decolonization and Indigenous futurism, Bowdoin College

Marsification instantly took me to another world, one full of creativity, music, and thought-provoking ideas. By the end, I realized I had been fully absorbed and entertained while also being challenged with intriguing questions about the future of space colonization.

Amy Vicnair, audio storyteller & documentarian

Description

Today we are being increasingly bombarded by the idea that humanity can and should expand to Mars. Coined in 2020, the neologism “Marsification” critiques the idea that we can reset civilization by escaping to “Planet B”. Marsification: A tale of planetary grief is a concept album audio artwork that unsettles seductive astro-colonial fantasies of leaving a damaged Earth for an uninhabited Mars. This arc of 16 vignettes is designed for individual experiences and community dialogues to process this interplanetary moment in all of its dissonance. Marsification weaves together textured soundscapes, spoken dialogue, satire, hyper-pop, whimsy, humor and heartache, non-fiction and speculative fiction, science and poetry, fantasy and history, as we travel to inner and outer space. How can we examine assumptions about the future? And how do we listen properly to the ghosts that haunt the present?

Marsification is a concept album for people interested in the relationship between outer space and life on Earth, those who are involved in environmental defense and climate justice and self-reflective listeners as public dreams of the red planet loom large. Contrasting dissonant emotional tones and perspectives, we flavored science fact with pinches of science fiction, fusing the informative and the speculative to offer an unsettled sense about what is real and already underway, and what might be to come.

Artist Bios

Zara Zimbardo

Zara Zimbardo is an interdisciplinary cross-pollinator, educator, facilitator, writer, bodyworker, plant-whisperer, and equity consultant. She has a love for anthropologizing the West and making the familiar strange. More on her work here.


Lily Sloane

Lily Sloane is a composer and audio storyteller/experimenter as well as a practicing psychotherapist. She is fascinated and compelled by emotional, relational, political, and existential entanglements in scientific exploration and discovery.

Downloadable Assets

Contact us to request a code for a free Bandcamp download or WAV files.

Permissions & Educational Use

We have created a free downloadable Facilitation Guide for use in educational and community settings.

Marsification is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND.

This means:

  • Attribution required
  • Non-commercial use
  • No adaptations or derivatives

You may use this project or segments of it in educational or community settings, with attribution to the artists. If you would like to do something more with it, please contact us. We are interested in collaborations!