True Stories
A spacecraft was launched into outer space in 1977; as of
now, it was traveled 15 billion kilometers away from planet
earth.
This spacecraft
includes what is called the Golden Record. This record was
put inside the spacecraft in the event that
extraterrestrial intelligent beings might intercept it in
the distant future.
It is a gold-plated copper disc containing, besides sound
material – a spoken greeting in 55 different
languages, excerpts of music, and terrestrial sounds such
as a barking dog, the crying of infants, the noise of a
motor, etc.– 115 analogue images of our earth.
These images, which have now left our solar system, have
lost any connection with the world they represent.
In my work, I pursue this process further. Having
downloaded the images from NASA’s web site and the
site http://re-lab.net/welcome/,
I made printouts on paper, which I then placed on a light
table. I covered them with a white sheet and then traced in
pencil every clear line in the photographs.
Science and imagination meet in the act of sending the
golden record. The record was meant to represent our world
as a whole, and yet of necessity represents a reduced model
of this world.
At the same time, the universe to which scientists address
the messages on the record is entirely fictional.
In the photographic documents engraved into the record, I
recognize myself as an inhabitant of this earth whose image
was sent out into the universe. I permit myself to be
spoken of. Perhaps this image will achieve the impossible,
out there in the unknown, and the rational (the images on
the golden record) will penetrate into the irrational.
This world we picture as hidden in the vast expanse of a
universe may itself be nothing but our own
conception : a projection, a double.
Beat Lippert
Translated from German by Gerrit Jackson
Exhibition vue Shifting Identities
Kunsthaus Zurich
