– Multimedia artists will beam real-time tweets to the newly discovered GJ667Cc light-years away. What do you want to say to your brother from another (exo)planet?

(Credit: Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern)

I have so much to say to aliens, I really doubt I could keep it to 140 characters. But if I’m going to go the “Tweets in Space” route to speak to potential life forms on GJ667Cc, I’ll need to keep it short.

The experimental art project will beam real-time tweets toward the exoplanet 22 light-years away during performance events at the 2012 International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) in New Mexico.

Tweets will be streamed as animated Twitter spaceships towing messages.

(Credit: Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern)

“Simply tag your Twitter messages with #tweetsinspace, and your phones, laptops, mobile devices — anything with an Internet connection — will be transformed into an alien communicator,” says San Francisco new-media artist Scott Kildall, who is collaborating on the networked performance project with Nathaniel Stern, an associate professor in the Department of Art+Design at the University of Wisconsin’s Peck School of the Arts.

Scientists from Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of California at Santa Cruz whodiscovered GJ667Cc orbiting a triple-star system in February say its conditions might support Earth-like biological life.

Kildall and Stern can’t promise that your tweets will be read by a little green creature (or even a little water droplet) wielding a Samsung Galaxy S III. They can tell you, however, that your musings will be part of an exploration of “our spectacular need to connect, perform, and network with others. [The project] creates a tension between the depth and shallowness of sharing 140 characters at a time with the entire Internet world, in all its complexity, richness, and absurdity, by transmitting our passing thoughts and responses to everywhere and nowhere.”

The pair, currently seeking financial support for the endeavor on Kickstarter-like crowd-funding site RocketHub, say they’ll use the donations for either a “home-built or borrowed communication system” for shooting the tweets into space. They’ve raised more than $2,200 so far, and tell Crave that if they reach their minimum goal of $8,500, they’ll work with a team that can guarantee at least five light-years of travel for the messages toward GJ667Cc. “We’re hoping the alien listening devices are more advanced than our own, so they can pick it up,” they say.

These ‘twitters’ will be stretched across all time and space as a reflection on the contemporary phenomenon of the ’status’ updates we broadcast, both literal and metaphoric. –Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern

Apparently, not everyone appreciates the philosophical intent behind the project. “Expect FBI van in front of your house really soon,” one YouTube commenter threatens. Still, close to 1,000 #tweetsinspace messages have already come in. A favorite example: “No YOU hang up. (giggle) No, you hang up.”

In addition to getting beamed upward at ISEA in September, all #tweetsinspace messages will be streamed to a live public Web site, where they’ll be permanently archived. They’ll also be projected — as animated tweet-towing spaceships like the one pictured above — at the Balloon Museum and planetarium-like digital dome in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

RocketHub donations, meanwhile, will yield contributor rewards ranging from an acrylic Tweets in Space spaceship stencil and handmade Tweets in Space spaceship soap to (on the high end) a working, small-scale satellite model. Promise me a retweet by ET, guys, and I’m in.

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Twitter is a force for both the good and the mundane.

For every useful piece of information, witty statement, or earnest communication, there are a dozen tweets revealing such insights as ‘Fell over in the shower today LOLZ’.

Now, in a bid to democratise the universe, two multimedia artists plan to send out all and any tweets into the cosmos, sharing everything with any lurking aliens with an ISP.

All anyone has to do is add the hastag #tweetsinspace to their message, and artists Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern will collect them and forward them on to E.T.

Tweets in Space: The campaign hopes to raise $8,500 in order to share humanity’s thoughts with the universe

The duo are collecting donations via RocketHub, a creative funding website, to fund the project.
Their aim is to ‘build or borrow a high tech communications system that will beam your real time text messages to a planet that can support extraterrestrial life.’

The pair are aiming to raise $8,500 - a surprisingly small amount for such a long-distance, 22 light-year phonecall - and so far have received more than $2,500. When they have their equipment, the pair will be ready to ‘inform extraterrestrial beings of our culture and society’ - both the good and the bad.

Asking for pledges, the pair say: ‘We will beam Twitter discussions from participants worldwide towards GJ667Cc - an exoplanet 22 light years away that might support earth-like biological life.

‘Anyone with an Internet connection can participate during two performance events, which will simultaneously take place online, at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA2012, New Mexico), and in the stars.

‘By engaging the millions of voices in the Twitterverse and dispatching them into the larger Universe, Tweets in Space activates a potent discussion about communication and life that traverses beyond our borders or understanding. It is not just a public performance; it performs a public.’

Earth’s ambassador: Scott Kildall appeals through RocketHub for funding to get our messages out there

Beam it up: The duo hope to buy or hire powerful transmitting equipment to send our earth-bound messages off to the universe

The pair added: ‘We will collect all Twitter messages tagged #tweetsinspace and transmit them into the cosmos via either a home-built or borrowed communication system.

‘Our soon-to-be alien friends will receive scores of unmediated thoughts and feedback about politics, philosophy, pop culture, dinner, dancing cats and everything in between.

‘All tweets will also be streamed to a live public website, where they’ll be permanently archived, as well as projected - as animated twitter spaceships towing messages - at the Balloon Museum and planetarium-like digital dome (IAIA), in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

‘Tweets in Space asks us to take a closer look at our spectacular need to connect, perform and network with others. It creates a tension between the depth and shallowness of sharing 140 characters at a time with the entire Internet world, in all its complexity, richness and absurdity, by transmitting our passing thoughts and responses to everywhere and nowhere.

‘These “twitters” will be stretched across all time and space as a reflection on the contemporary phenomenon of the “status” updates we broadcast, both literal and metaphoric.’

Kildall stated his reasons for the campaign in a video on RocketHub.

He said: ‘Previously only elite institutions or rich and powerful individuals could transmit to our alien friends.

‘We want to democratise the universe.’

Video: Tweets in Space

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2142828/Tweets-Space-Artists-plan-send-tweets-space—E-T-care-musings.html#ixzz1uZilU6Hs

“Why is an artist about to send tweets into space? Nathaniel Stern, associate professor at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, and Anu Ojha, Director of the National Space Academy in Leicester, explain.”

Here I discussed Tweets in Space, my collaborative project with Scott Kildall, in an interview with Justin Webb of BBC Radio 4 on the BBC’s flagship news program, Today.

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download as mp3 or mp4

  – Meet the pair of digital artists trying to raise enough money to send your online musings across the cosmos.

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You carefully hone your tweets like they’re the Great American Novel and painstakingly cultivate your Twitter followers. You obsess over your Klout score and consider yourself a true social media maven. But have you sent your tweets into space?

Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern, the duo behind such multimedia experiments as Wikipedia Art, are collecting donations via RocketHub to fund their latest project: “build or borrow a high tech communications system that will beam your real time text messages to a planet that can support extraterrestrial life.”

How does it work? Simply add the hashtag #tweetsinspace to any Twitter message. Kildall and Stern will collect them and, funding permitting, beam them spaceward in order to, as Mashable puts it, “inform extraterrestrial beings of our culture and society.”  “Previously only elite institutions or rich and powerful individuals could transmit to our alien friends,” Kildall says in their video appeal. “We want to democratize the universe.”

At a mere 22 light years away, their chosen planet, GJ667Cc, is the closest to Earth that’s likely to host lifeforms. (That’s 164 trillion miles — hey, neighbor!). They plan to use the money raised to obtain access to a laser or radio transmitter “with a dish strong enough for extraterrestrials to read from across the cosmos.” They’ll also open source their code so that anyone can do the same. The idea is to have the project up and running in time for a performance at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Albequerque, N.M. in September. As the duo say in their mission statement:

Tweets in Space asks us to take a closer look at our spectacular need to connect, perform and network with others. It creates a tension between the depth and shallowness of sharing 140 characters at a time with the entire Internet world, in all its complexity, richness and absurdity, by transmitting our passing thoughts and responses to everywhere and nowhere.

Sure, whatever — the important thing is tweets in space. Kildall and Stern are only about $2,100 toward their $8,500 goal, however, so if you Twitterati are tired of communicating with the dull old human population, better  get donating.

Twitter’s bringing the world together in 140 characters or less. But can it bind together life forms from across the universe?

A project that aims to send tweets to a distant planet capable of sustaining life is in the process of being funded, and your tweets could potentially be picked up by extraterrestrial life forms.

At a live performance scheduled for September, Scott Keldall and Nathaniel Stern plan to send tweets bearing the #tweetsinspace hashtag to GJ667Cc, a planet that has the potential to support life. The planet is 22 light-years or around 164 trillion miles away.

The duo behind the plan has created other collaborative art projects in the past, such as Wikipedia Art—artwork that was composed on Wikipedia so that anyone can edit it. Following the success of that piece, they’re now looking to the stars.

“The intersection of our work is around networks and performance,” Kildall told the Daily Dot. “[S]ince we live in separate cities, communicating as many of us do exclusively by the Internet, we wanted to make a project in which the public could perform but also looked at our own need for understanding one another at 140 characters at a time.”

“Scott planted the initial seed of combining Internet art with transmission and space art,” Stern added. “[T]hrough our manic brainstorming process it grew into using the discussion platform of Twitter and lending an amplification and intensity to what it ‘does’ as a stage and platform, by beaming a feed to the closest exoplanet that might support Earth-like biological life.”

Stern and Kildall are seeking funding for the project through RocketHub, which, unlike Kickstarter, offers an All & More model where project creators get to take all the cash they raise—regardless of whether the project meets its stated goal. With 18 days remaining until the funding deadline, they’ve raised $2,080 of the $8,500 funding goal.

They plan to borrow or build a communication system, or upgrade an existing one. This will be used to send the tweets at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), taking place in Albuquerque, N.M., in September.

The pair plans to collect and transmit all tweets bearing the #tweetsinspace hashtag to GJ667Cc to inform extraterrestrial beings of our culture and society. The tweets will also be archived on a website.

“By structuring this project as a performance, we will have a live component where people can respond to each other’s tweets in both physical space at ISEA, and at home, through the Tweets in Space website,” Kildall noted. “Each tweet can then build upon the previous, so that extraterrestrials who are listening could hear a whole conversation rather than single short messages.”

Stern said the project is more than a public performance, that it aims to encapsulate how humans converse:

“Although we take the science of the project very seriously, this project is more about us than anything else. What do we say, and to whom, in public, online, in brief? How do we respond? What does that do? These are questions worth asking in the everyday, and Tweets in Space reminds us how important these questions are, by making them more important, even if just for 45 minutes in September.”

So far, the project has created a spirited debate on Twitter.

“There has of course been criticism (mostly social, some scientific), but more excitement,” Stern noted. “There have already been #tweetsinspace political posts, requests for pick up, and dialogues around impossibility and imagination.”

We’ve already had astronauts tweeting from outwith the Earth’s atmosphere. Getting a @reply from outside the galaxy would be—quite literally—out of this world.

“Tweets in Space,” a live performance event expected to take place this fall, will broadcast Twitter messages to a planet 22 light-years away that scientists say may support life.

Get ready to tweet to the cosmos.

Twitter users around the world may be able to find followers 22 light-years away thanks to “Tweets in Space,” a project that hopes to beam 140-character missives to a potentially habitable planet this fall.

During a live performance set for September 21 at the Albuquerque Balloon Museum, collaborators Scott Kildall and Nathaniel Stern plan to beam tweets carrying the hashtag #tweetsinspace all the way to GJ667Cc.

Scientists say the recently discovered planet has the potential to support some form of life.

“We look at it from the standpoint of democratizing deep space transmissions,” Kildall told the Daily News. “All tweets sent during the performance, whether you’re at the event or at home on your computer, will be transmitted.”

“We thought it would be worthwhile to show the sea change in how information is broadcast in our culture,” he added.

Kildall and Stern expect to send out their interplanetary Twitter feed via a high-powered radio transmitter. They hope to pay for the gear with donations they collect via the fundraising website rockethub.com.

So far, they’ve amassed nearly $1,600 of the $8,500 they say they’ll need to beam the messages a distance of five light-years.

There hope is that five light years is far enough into space for any ET’s on GJ667Cc who might be tuning in to pick up the signal.

“We’re making some assumptions about their listening technology,” Stern told the Daily News. “We’re assuming a similar intelligence to our own can pick out patterns.”

A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or the equivalent of 5.88 trillion miles.

Stern says he and Kildall are discussing the project with scientists in the research, governmental and commercial fields who may be able to contribute expertise in sending signals into outer space.

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When the interplanetary missions Pioneer 10 and 11 launched in the late 1970s they each carried a metal plaque engraved with a set of pictorial messages from humanity. Eventually these extraordinary probes will traverse interstellar space, carrying these hopeful symbols towards anyone, or anything, that might one day find them. A few years later also saw the launch of the Voyager probes, this time carrying golden record platters filled with images and sounds of our homeworld and species. These were thoughtful and quietly speculative artifacts, cast to the stars for eternity.

Forty years later and our world has moved on considerably. We’re now a vastly more interconnected species, huge amounts of information flows around our planet on a daily basis, a torrent of articulate and inarticulate signals. We’re much more attuned to events as they occur anywhere on Earth, and much more likely to voice our opinion and to assume that our voice has a chance of being heard. It’s a tremendously interesting and exciting time, as well as an unsteady and often nerve-wracking one. And as this plays out we are also discovering that the universe is filled with other worlds, an enormous and terrifying number of planets around, and between, the stars. Some of these will almost certainly bear at least a passing resemblance to our own, perhaps never ‘Earth-like’, but conceivably ‘Earth-equivalent’, and we may have already found a few of them.

All of which makes a new art-meets-science project even more provocative and exciting. “Tweets In Space” is the creation of Nathaniel Stern and Scott Kildall and seeks to do nothing less than transmit a stream of your tweets towards one of the best current candidates for a planet capable of harboring life, the super-Earth GJ 667Cc – a roughly 5 Earth mass world orbiting an M-dwarf star only 22 light years away.

If all goes well then in September 2012 Tweets In Space will go live at the International Symposium on Electronic Art in New Mexico, and your Twitter account will become (as the creators suggest) your personal interstellar communications device. Tweets with the hashtag #tweetsinspace will be broadcast towards GJ 667Cc, as well as form part of an extraordinary live and web-available animated display (you really have to check out the video, below here). It’s tremendous fun, but it’s also a fascinating experiment. Stern and Kildall are no strangers to investigating the possibilities of human interaction and art brought about by the internet, their collaboration “Wikipedia Art” was a genuine phenomenon, making it to the hallowed pages of the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post.

I asked them about the more technical aspects of the project – such as actually making an interstellar transmission, and they have an impressive technology road-map for trying to make this a reality (including making decisions about whether to send Tweets as digital data or as analog, pictorial representations, which is very clever). Right now they may have to build their own transmitter and so have a call out on the fund-raising site Rocket Hub to try to raise the approximately $8K needed to be confident that the Tweets have a chance of making it to GJ 667Cc. It’s also possible that an equipment option will be forthcoming from established commercial or federal organizations who can lend ‘big gun’ infrastructure to the transmission.

What I personally find very exciting about the whole concept is the unfiltered nature of it, and the fascinating mirror it will hold up to us all. We really are a different world from when the Pioneer and Voyager probes launched, and other deliberate radio transmissions to the stars have typically been sober and highly structured. The general radio noise we spew into the cosmos has also diminished as we’ve moved into the low-power digital age, so the well-worn adage of aliens coming across our dreadful TV shows may no longer be true. Is it safe to send thousands (millions!) of 140 character long missives to the stars? Older posts at Life, Unbounded have certainly considered the problems of interstellar memes (units of cultural information), but the bottom line is that we really have no idea.

So I think that anything which forces us to stop and consider what it is that we really feel represents humanity – good, bad, or indifferent, is an excellent opportunity. Tweets In Space is well worth our support – so go check it out, and consider helping build that transmitter! The icing on the cake is that Stern and Kildall will make all of their technical work open source, making one wonder how long it is before high-school kids forget about weather balloons carrying cameras to the upper atmosphere, and instead reach for the stars.

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Please support this project on Rockethub (link active April 26 - May 26, 2012).

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related press: The Daily Mail (2012) BBC Radio 4: Today (2012), Time (2012), Scientific American (2012), NY Daily News (2012), Mashable.com / The Daily Dot (2012), Forbes (2012) and this ongoing list of international online coverage.

A technique: Sentimental construction.

A process: Register the environmental conditions in a series of relational cross-currents. Make felt how the simple presence of movement in the space affects not only the space itself, but the nature of the work. Ruffle the presupposition that the human is necessarily at the center of this activation. Enfold the participant in an active ecology of the world, attuning to its difference. Do not place the participant in the role of direct activator of change. Sense, compose, dress, architect.

Description: Weather Patterns puts in counterpoint a number of materials, concepts, and conditions that affect one another over long stretches of time. The feedback loops between animated sound and air currents (across 50 meters of individually activated speakers and fans), fabric and electromagnetic fields (hundreds of yards of reconfigurable, conductive textiles, some with embedded sensors), scrambled texts and formalist projections, movement and stasis and interaction, are never fully revealed. The piece rather amplifies a relational field where matter and its matters continuously take account, and change.

Artists: Erin Manning, Nathaniel Stern, Brian Massumi, Nicole Ridgway, Bryan Cera, C. Matthew Luther, and Nirmal Raja

Images and Documentation coming soon

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.

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