A communication satellite launched in September carrying a specially designed and fabricated artifact. A single-crystal silicone wafer, etched with 100 images, serves as a time capsule from earth to any inhabitants living (on any planet) hundreds of millions of years from now. The Last Pictures is a book about the project, written by the artist and curator of the images, Trevor Paglen, and published by the University of CA Press.
For his project Mr. Paglen culled photographs from sources including Flickr and Google Images, stock archives, National Geographic and museums, finally winnowing the images down to 100. “In the beginning I was thinking of this as an archive, then at the end I realized it was more like a silent film or poem,” he said. The images he chose, he said, tell a story about life and language.
“In the beginning I was thinking of this as an archive, then at the end I realized it was more like a silent film or poem.”
Paglen worked with MIT on this super- archival-materials project – specifically Prof. Brian Wardle in the AeroAstro department. In addition to his nano engineering expertise, Wardle contributed one more image to the artifact, the new “iconic” AeroAstro logo, designed by yours truly, Opus Design.
How cool is it to think our little graphic design project is actually 24,000 miles in space and will last, hmm, one billion years! Communications director, Bill Litant, suggested we begin work on an updated logo design in about 250 million years.
Live long and prosper little logo.
