If you could create one minute piece of art to be sent into outer space, what would it be? That is the question that Grammy Award winner Gotye and American vocalist Amanda Palmer will soon answer with their original contributions (in sound or audio visual format) to Aphids’ Forever Now project.
Gotye and Palmer top the list of commissioned musicians and visual artists contributing to the project.
The artists so far include acclaimed French composer Pierre Henry, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustaffson, Mexican artist Ivan Puig, Australian two-person art collective Soda_Jerk, musician James Ferraro and Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey.
Forever Now is inspired by the Golden Record sent into space on the Voyager space probe in 1977. Curated by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, the record was intended to represent the best of humanity. Forever Now seeks to create a new Golden Record for the 21st Century answering the question, ‘What is humanity now?’
The project is curated by Brian Ritchie (Violent Femmes and MOMA FOMA), Aphids’ artistic director Willoh S. Weiland, Jeff Khan (co-director, Performance Space) and Thea Baumann (Aphids’ artistic associate).
Forever Now is calling for artists to submit works for the project. In June, selected original artworks will be included on a Golden Record created by contemporary jeweller Susan Cohn.
The content of the record will be launched with a screening, concert and digital broadcast at a secret location next January. In a spectacular finale, the record will be launched into deep space.
Willoh S. Weiland, the artistic director of Aphids said: “Forever Now is the first time that curators and artists will comprehensively be able to determine what is important to send to space.
“If we imagine space as ‘the future’, this is important to the role of art in this context. We want the record to communicate not just the positive aspects of our culture but instead be what it is on Earth: a diverse, polymorphic voice articulating what is wonderful as well as what is complex, difficult and sublime about humanity.”
Public submissions for Forever Now are open until June for artists and composers to create original one-minute works in sound and audio-visual format.
Contributors are asked to respond to the fact that their piece will last a billion years and to ‘consider the unseen and the infinite as an entirely different audience’.
Submissions can be made on the www.forevernow.me website.
