FLYOVER
2020, Parsons; august 1990, the 26th closed groove on engraved vinyl record - recuts sound of explosion captured on Parsons' recordings, STOP THE PERMANENT WAVES video, DOG SHOOTING NIGHT drawing series, Eclipse Point Town representation of an aerial view of Diego Garcia / B-52, KC 135 and B2SS - 3D printer, wood, plexiglass.
On August 15, 1990, Jerry Wataru Parsons, an American ornithologist of modest renown, decided to travel to Malabar Island (one of the four main islands of Aldabra, an atoll of the Seychelles) to confirm the veracity of a possible reappearance of the Aldabra Nesilla - an endemic breeding bird of the island of the now extinct Acrocephalidae family.
Eleven days after arriving on the island, Parsons witnessed an unusual sound phenomenon that correlated with the swoop into the sea of several hundred of these birds. The facts of this event are based on a set of audio documents found in his auxiliary camp recorded since his arrival on the Island which will later be called “The Parsons Narrative”.
It is in the last of these recordings, one of the most cryptic, that it is possible to hear a sound detonation similar to the firing of fireworks and which, according to certain theories, would be at the origin of the fall of the birds.
Parsons was found dead on August 31, 5 days after his last recording, on the shores of the island. The autopsy report says little, the sea water having damaged the body. However, there are slight cuts in the entirety of it which, according to the logic of the story told in the recording, could be the consequence of the collision between Parsons and the birds during their fall. However, no traces of the birds, dead or alive, will be found.
Even today, there is no consensus on the plurality of these observations. The proximity of the island to that of Diego Garcia, an American military base serving as a stopping point for the American B2 stealth plane, would nevertheless support the hypothesis that this sound could have been emitted by the army. The Jerry W. Parsons recording is therefore essentially considered the delirious story of a man who has been sick and mentally adrift for many years. The story nevertheless arouses a certain fascination by its close link with secret military experiments.
