THE FUTURE HAS A PAST – artefact No. 0

No. 0: Iechyd da i chwi yn awr ac yn oesoedd / Good health to you now and forever!

We will shout this message to all Terrestrials thru a banner, 12 meter wide, on the outside of our exhibition space as the future is terrestrial.

Artefact No. 0: a soundfile and a large fabric banner containing a frase.

This phrase welcomes you at the entrance. It is a phrase that flies through space, recorded on a golden disc on board the Voyager 1 spacecraft launched on the 5th of September 1977. The disk carries greetings in 54 other languages, to send a message to extra-terrestrials who might one day find the spacecraft as it journeys onwards. According to NASA: ‘We made a special effort to record those languages spoken by the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants. If we were able to accomplish that, and still had time, we would then try to include as many other languages as we could.’ The spacecraft’s next calculated big encounter with a star will take place in 40,000 years.

(‘The story behind the creation of the “interstellar message” is chronicled in the book, “Murmurs of Earth”, by Carl Sagan, et al. Unfortunately, not much information is given about the individual speakers. Many of the speakers were from Cornell University and the surrounding communities. They were given no instructions on what to say other than that it was to be a greeting to possible extraterrestrials and that it must be brief’ (https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/greetings/).)