Cities And Memory

"Machu Picchu Paces is inspired by my own trek along the Inca Trail in 2024, a journey of beauty, grandeur, and mystical setting culminating in Machu Picchu that left a deep impression on me. The raw beauty of the young Andes Mountains, the shifting terrain and biomes, and the sacred sense of place – a perfect integration of architecture into the landscape – resonated deeply with me. "My composition was created exclusively using a field recording from a 5-day trek along the Inca trail – the same duration as mine. The piece responds to the walking rhythm captured in the recording, which seemed unusually fast compared to my experience. Slow and steady is the way of the Inca Trail, and I wanted to expand the scope of rhythms to embrace the full range of travelers. I used time scaling to adjust the step rate and create four variants at different tempos, ranging from 40 steps per minute (an elderly hiker) to 150 (a professional porter). These operations produced sound files of different durations, which were then