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Tweets in Space: Or Social Media for Aliens

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A couple of years back artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern launched an art project called Wikipedia Art, an art page posted to Wikipedia that anyone could edit. It created considerable opposition from Wikipedia.org who clearly felt Wikipedia was too important to be parodied or questioned by artists. The page was immediately marked for deletion and for a short period the artists faced legal action for trademark violation.

Kildall and Stern are back with a new project: "Tweets in Space". Whereas Wikipedia Art was meant to demonstrate that Wikipedia is not knowledge as such, but negotiated knowledge, Tweets in Space raises the issue of relevance and communications.  Who cares about Tweets?  Aren't they just trivial in the overall scheme of the universe? Or could they be the first link between humans and extra terrestrial beings?

We might just find out. Kildall and Stern are building a crowdsourced project to beam tweets to planet GJ667Cc.

"Tweets in Space" will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide to GJ667Cc: a planet 22 light years away that might support human-like biological life. Although somewhat ironic in our attempt, the work is itself very serious; a look at ourselves, and how we perform for the public, and as a public, for ourselves and for others, together."

I don't quite get that either but the artists have a track record of creating work that gets under the skin. Full disclosure: I am a proud owner of Scott Kildall's recreation of the American lunar landing (see below) and several of Nathaniel Stern's scanner art pieces, including his earliest, glorious attempt to recreate Monet's Lilies with an HP-Flatbed. I exhibited both artists in my digital art gallery in Ireland and in Second Life but have no connection with this new project.

For anybody who wants to contribute to the cost of beaming tweets to aliens there is a Rockethub page for that.

Follow me on twitter @haydn 1701