Existing comment:
Gold Artifact, 2013
etched, gold-plated disk
The Gold Artifact, one of Paglen's impossible objects, is a wondrous thing, showing human history for an unknowable -- perhaps a nonhuman -- viewer. Collaborating with a public arts organization and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Paglen developed an ultra-archival disc, micro-etched with one hundred photographs and encased in a gold-plated shell. The object presented here is a duplicate. In late 2012, the communications satellite EchoStar XVI was launched into orbit with the original artifact mounted to its deck, where it remains slowly circling Earth. The Gold Artifact refers to Carl Sagan's Golden Record, copies of which were attached to NASA's two Voyager deep-space probes in the 1970s. It carried audio and visual mementos of life on Earth meant to communicate about humanity to extraterrestrials |