The Last PicturesHuman civilizations' longest lasting artifacts are not the great Pyramids of Giza, nor the cave paintings at Lascaux, but the communications satellites that circle our planet. In a stationary orbit above the equator, the satellites that broadcast our TV signals, route our phone calls, and process our credit card transactions experience no atmospheric drag. Their inert hulls will continue to drift around Earth until the Sun expands into a red giant and engulfs them about 4.5 billion years from now. The Last Pictures, co-published by Creative Time Books, is rooted in the premise that these communications satellites will ultimately become the cultural and material ruins of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, far outlasting anything else humans have created. Inspired in part by ancient cave paintings, nuclear waste warning signs, and Carl Sagan's Golden Records of the 1970s, artist/geographer and MacArthur "Genius" Fellow Trevor Paglen has developed a collection of one hundred images that will be etched onto an ultra-archival, golden silicon disc. The disc, commissioned by Creative Time, will then be sent into orbit onboard the Echostar XVI satellite in September 2012, as both a time capsule and a message to the future. The selection of 100 images, which are the centerpiece of the book, was influenced by four years of interviews with leading scientists, philosophers, anthropologists, and artists about the contradictions that characterize contemporary civilizations. Consequently, The Last Pictures engages some of the most profound questions of the human experience, provoking discourse about communication, deep time, and the economic, environmental, and social uncertainties that define our historical moment. Copub: Creative Time Books |
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aerospace Alamos aliens Anthropocene archive Artifact cover artist astronomer axioms Babylonian bird-man bison Bseisy Carl Sagan cells century Chetrit Clarke Belt clocks cloning collection communications satellites cosmos create Creative decode deep designed developed discovered discoverers early Earth earth’s surface Easter Island EchoStar Corporation EchoStar XVI engineering existence explains extraterrestrial Frank Drake future geosynchronous Gödel Helou horms human hundred idea images ı ı ı Joel Weisberg Katie Detwiler Lacks’s Lascaux Last Pictures launch List Visual Arts living look materials mathematics meaning ment million Molczan Navajo Nguyen nuclear waste º º object orbit photographs Pioneer Plaque Pit scene planet positive properties pulsars radio waves RAE Table Rafael Núñez rocket ſae satel scientific scientists space spacecraft star map technologies there’s things thousand timescales tion Trevor Paglen universal language uſeful Volapük Voyager Wardle whale sharks whoſe York