The Starseed Transmission

28 Sep-19 Oct 2013

Overview

Sovay Berriman, Plastique Fantastique, Rowena Harris, Dean Kenning, Inês Rebelo. Curated by Lucy A. Sames. A speculative broadcast to a non-specific, extraterrestrial civilisation, Carl Sagan's schematic résumé of life on earth engraved onto the gold anodized plaque of NASA's Pioneer 10, is now over 8 billion miles away. In 1974, Sagan received a reply.. Channeled through a collective hallucination in Folsom maximum security prison and corroborated by a passing comet, this reply came in the form of The Starseed Transmission - a message from outerspace - an imagined communiqué from an extraterrestrial being. Transcribed by psychologist, writer, LSD advocate and inmate Dr Timothy Leary, in the form of a diagram, The Starseed Transmission communicates with the Pioneer plaque via a call and response of compressed information.