“Tweets in Space” will launch unedited Twitter conversations at alien worlds.
In what is perhaps the dumbest idea in the history of human civilization, a couple of experimental artists want to collect tweets from around the world and then fling them across the stars at planets most likely to support human-like life, beginning with the recently discovered GJ 667Cc, which lies about 22 light years from Earth.
“We will collect all Twitter messages tagged #tweetsinspace and transmit them into the cosmos via either a home-built or borrowed communication system,” spacetweeters Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern explained on their RocketHub page. “Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive scores of unmediated thoughts and feedback about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything in between.”
The duo is raising funds on RocketHub because it needs to either build or borrow a transmission system capable of actually getting tweets into space. Funds raised above and beyond the $8500 goal will go toward upgrading the hardware, online coding, design and promotion, while the tweets themselves will be provided by anyone who uses the #tweetsinspace hashtag during two “performance events” at the 2012 International Symposium on Electronic Art, which takes place September 19-24.
“Tweets in Space asks us to take a closer look at our spectacular need to connect, perform and network with others. It creates a tension between the depth and shallowness of sharing 140 characters at a time with the entire Internet world, in all its complexity, richness and absurdity, by transmitting our passing thoughts and responses to everywhere and nowhere,” the pair wrote. “These ‘twitters’ will be stretched across all time and space as a reflection on the contemporary phenomenon of the ‘status’ updates we broadcast, both literal and metaphoric.”
That’s great. It’s also likely to bring interstellar doom down upon our heads, as the galactic community finally takes notice of what’s going on over here and decides that humanity cannot be allowed to survive. How is it possible that four decades of “progress” has taken us from this to this? We might as well take our cue from Chairface Chippendale and use a laser to burn a giant wang onto the surface of the moon.
To learn more about Tweets In Space and the coming end of the world, check out tweesinspace.org.
