What if geometry were an extraterrestrial technology that humans accidentally discovered long ago to communicate with other worlds? What do Mesoamerican pyramids have in common with radio telescopes? Besides electromagnetic transmissions from outer space, fire balls also occasionally penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere — as one did over the morning skies of Russia on February 15, 2013 that plunged into the city of Chelyabinsk. Weaving together scenes from the movie Contact with 16mm footage shot at the Very Large Array — the radio astronomy observatory in New Mexico, as well as three Mayan pyramids across the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico—Calakmul, Uxmal, and Cobá, Pyramids and Parabolas I is the first of a multi-episodic film series that imagines how geometric forms can function as portals into parallel dimensions. The parabolic shape of modern day radio telescopes—made to listen to signals emitted by celestial objects and events, and similarly the pyramidal shapes of ancient Mayan monoliths—where priests communed with forces beyond the human realm, can both be understood as ways of transiting into alternate universes. As the disembodied voice at the end of the first episode asks: “Is anybody out there?”

如果几何是一种外星技术，人类在很久以前偶然发现，用来与其他世界交流，那会怎样？中美洲金字塔与射电望远镜有什么共同之处？除了来自外太空的电磁信号，不时穿透地球大气层的还有火球，就像2013年2月15日的早上，划过俄罗斯的天空冲向车里雅宾斯克市的那个一样。《角锥体与抛物线I》运用了电影《超时空接触》中的片段，与之并置交织的是在新墨西哥州的射电天文观测台“超大阵列”（Very Large Array）以及墨西哥尤卡坦半岛的三座玛雅金字塔（卡拉克穆尔、乌斯马尔和科巴）用16毫米胶片拍摄的场景。这部作品是多集系列影片中的第一篇章，艺术家将几何形状想象成进入平行世界的端口。用于收听天体和天文活动发出的信号的现代射电望远镜的抛物线形状，以及与之相似的，古代祭司用来与人类领域之外的力量进行沟通的玛雅金字塔的角锥体形状，都可以被理解为进入其他宇宙维度的方式。正如第一篇章结尾处那个无实体的声音所问：“那里有人在吗?”