You probably read Ash’s post about The Beatles having their tunes broadcasted out into space, now it’s the Knife’s turn.
Swedish techno artist HÃ¥kan Lidbo and his plan to talk to space.
Lidbo is currently rubbing up with the Swedish Space Corporation on a project to send a variety of new electronic music into space via Sweden’s Esrange station otherwise known for offering some of the world’s first commercial space flights in conjunction with Spaceport Sweden and Virgin Galactic.
Olof Dreijer of the Knife has recorded a track called “Al Jazeera”, which, as Lidbo describes, presents “the very mechanics from the inside of his computer– the sounds from the circuits and hard drives.”
“He wants to send a postcard from Earth with environmental sounds that are unique to our planet. And the way Olof sees the world, it’s controlled by computers. Transactions of money and information are flooding the internet, but not many people have access to all this information…most people remain ignorant and poor. So that was his idea behind the track.” Lidbo explains.
Mr. Lidbo is deadly serious too as he writes, “A CD will be released for humans, but the music is made for alien civilizations and it holds messages and structures that are meant to give an idea who we are…some sort of universal message, sometimes with codes of binary figures, sometimes with scales and frequencies to explain how we humans function.”
Why electronic music? “First of all, I think the computer is the most magnificent music instrument ever invented…so it’s a good thing to show the aliens. And for humans, the sound of the synthesizer always has been associated with space.” Lidbo answers.
“The Voyager 1 and 2 sent out in 1977 [were] the most serious attempts to send ‘Music For Alien Civilizations’, but after 31 years en route they haven’t reached further than just beyond Pluto… We will send radio waves, they are fairly easy to aim with good precision, they are easy to decode back to music and they travel at the speed of light so the composers that send out the musical messages might still be alive when we receive the answer.” says Lidbo.
Do note, he did say ‘when’ not ‘if’.
Lidbo = determined, bring on that space talk.
