From the projections of science fiction to the decentralized computing resources SETI used to comb the universe, our interactions with imagined aliens have always been more about people than any race we might encounter. The Golden Record (as distinct from the ones they hand out to recording artists) is a project outlined by the late physicist Carl Sagan, who envisioned the small probabily that there's someone else out there who might find a very well constructed message-in-a-bottle. Sent with the two 1977 Voyager probes, the records are humanity as we'd like to be perceived; sounds and images encoded into the simplest form we can think of (binary), just in case.
Using public domain footage, fillmmaker Penny Lane has produced a project in homage to and in the spirit of Sagan's vision. Perhaps "The Voyager" (below) will be on the next record we send, fingers crossed, spinning through space.
The Voyagers from Penny Lane on Vimeo.
Recent comments