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Monolith

Broadcasting art to space.

We scan light and sound waves for extraterrestrial life and use them to study our solar system. To me, it feels romantic. I imagine someone on another planet, very far away, like a cosmic amateur radio operator, listening in and trying to make sense of our planet. Unfortunately most of the content we have been broadcasting into space is frankly, nonsense.

Monolith is an extraterrestrial satellite broadcasting station. It takes recordings from the historic Soyuz 4 mission from 1969, re-processing them as generative visual artworks, to then rebroadcast them back to space as binary pixel values.

Soyuz_4 was the first spacecraft to successfully dock with another, signalling the beginning of our ability to live in space and have a continuing human space presence on the International Space Station. It was at the height of the space race. Both the USSR and the USA tried to flex their might and muscles, which in the late 1960s meant putting a human on the moon.

The Russia and the US we have now are in many ways similar or worse. And space has taken on a new significance.

Much like the Egyptian pharaohs, erecting giant phallic symbols, so high, as if they had the power to mingle with the gods, to create the perception of power that held their kingdoms together.

Concept, design, coding, fabrication.

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