Greetings
There’s no place where I feel more connected to the cosmos than at the SETI Institute’s Hat Creek Radio Observatory. Standing amidst the array of gleaming white radio dishes my ears are straining for the whisper of an alien civilization. During last week’s visit I to the array made a stop at the inaugural branch of The Library of the Great Silence, an intergalactic cabinet of curiosities conceived by SETI AIR Jonathon Keats. Visitors and artists have already made contributions (and swaps), though we’re still waiting for any extraterrestrial loans. Find out more about this fascinating project in our newsletter below. What would you add to the library?
Wishing you clear skies (and keep listening!),
Bettina
Artist Spotlight
Jonathon Keats
Jonathon Keats’ project The Library of the Great Silence is an installation art project that addresses one of the implications of the Fermi Paradox. If the cosmos is only sparsely populated by intelligent beings, it implies that at some point in their development almost all technological societies encounter a barrier they cannot cross. To counter such a dystopian prospect, Keats created an intergalactic lending library to research planetary futures. Branches of this library have already been installed at the SETI Institute’s Hat Creek Radio Observatory and at museums and universities around the world.
Jonathon Keats is an experimental philosopher, artist, and writer whose conceptually-driven transdisciplinary projects explore all aspects of society, adapting methods from the sciences and the humanities. He has exhibited and lectured at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO. He is also the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design.
Watch SETI AIR
How may an advanced alien civilization provide us with clues as to how to surmount existential threats like climate change or mutual annihilation? Watch SETI AIR Director Bettina Forget in conversation with Jonathon Keats and find out what’s in the library:
The Library of the Great Silence
A conversation with Jonathon Keats
Have ideas what should be included in The Library of the Great Silence? Add your suggestions in the video’s comment section!
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October 8, 2023, 4:40 pm PDT
The Lab 2948
16th Street San Francisco, CA 94103
