Re: <nettime> Speculative Intergalactic Network

The Voyager Golden Record is an abstract of humanity. Are those really the key facts about humanity? What do we want to tell aliens about us? Are cable TV, internet memes and Starbucks coffee not a better abstract of our (yes, rich and privileged Western) culture (and their counterparts in Asia, Africa, …)?

Kim Asendorf created the “First animated GIF sent into Deep Space”. ;) http://kimasendorf.com/first-gif-sent-into-deep-space/. And my entrance exam at an art school was actually about teaching aliens something human: https://vimeo.com/101217279.

Forget the aliens. If you read Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem, you don't
want to communicate with them.

But only imagining communication with aliens (or science-fiction in general) can bring interesting ideas about humankind itself.

Do we want to discover aliens or is it better to solve human problems first (whatever this means)?

I totally agree with this. And wouldn't it be a great collective project
to devise new ways of listening.

New ways of listening is a good point and reminds me of acoustic and soundscape ecology (R. Murray Schafer, Barry Truax, https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html) and Pauline Oliveros’ term Deep Listening.

Not only listening to individual lifeforms, but to systems (nature, climate, the atmosphere, the universe, …) is a way to understand those systems better and to be aware of their specific needs (oh no, climate change!). It’s seems like a very meditative task.

Yes, we need new ways of listening. We need to listen better.

K E N O

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