Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Technological evolution and obsolescence on board a spaceship bound for Proxima b, in a new project by artist Julia Christensen
This volume documents an ongoing investigation by artist Julia Christensen (born 1976) into how our relentless "upgrade culture"--the perceived notion that we need to constantly upgrade our electronics to remain relevant--fundamentally impacts our experience of time. In a personal narrative interspersed with related interdisciplinary artwork and conversations with experts from different fields (other artists, archivists, academics), Christensen takes readers along a path, from the international "e-waste" industry to institutional archives, that eventually leads her to a collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL).
At JPL, Christensen has teamed up with a group of exo-planetary scientists, engineers and artificial intelligence experts to develop a pair of space missions that transcend contemporary cycles of technological obsolescence. The first of these includes an update of the Voyager spacecraft's 1977 "Golden Record"--an artwork for a future interstellar spacecraft concept that will travel to Proxima b, 4.2 light years away from Earth. The second, a 200-year operational CubeSat, will communicate continuously with a group of trees on Earth. In taking on this challenge, Christensen--a female pioneer in sending art into outer space--must imagine an artwork that will upgrade itself and evolve over decades on a spaceship headed toward a potentially habitable planet in another star system.