An imaginary first contact message from aliens to Earth. The science fiction cliche is that they would send us the prime numbers. So I set up a MIDI clip of synths playing notes in bursts of the first eight primes. Then I thought, how would aliens help draw attention to it as something significant we should be paying attention to? Well, they'd be monitoring our TV and radio signals, and they would know about music, and we use it to organize and focus our attention. So they'd want a drum pattern underneath, something with enough symmetry to be clearly ordered and enough asymmetry to keep us paying attention. Afrodiasporic dance beats fit the bill perfectly. Since they have access to all of our pop culture, I figured they would want to quote some of it back at us to signal their awareness of it: a key bit of dialog from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and "I Know You Got Soul" by Bobby Byrd, to let us know that they too have got soul, and it's the most important trait that we all share.
More on this 453rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Dial Up (The Assignment: Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound), at:
https://disquiet.com/0453/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0453-dial-up/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Images associated with this project drawn from Flickr.com and used thanks to a Creative Commons license allowing for non-commercial adaptation:
Lars Hammar
https://flic.kr/p/cvLDjm
https://flic.kr/p/cwonUb
Marc West
https://flic.kr/p/84zPoL
Tom Coates
https://flic.kr/p/abPXeJ
Stuart
https://flic.kr/p/eBVyxk
Pedrik
https://flic.kr/p/asBiQk
Babak Fakhamzadeh
https://flic.kr/p/5mArtZ
Tom Blackwell
https://flic.kr/p/8pLFK8
Simon Bierwald
https://flic.kr/p/bh3RGr
https://flic.kr/p/bh4epp
https://flic.kr/p/bh4X2Z
Chris Maytag
https://flic.kr/p/BgSC
Alan
https://flic.kr/p/3jfJg
verysubmm
https://flic.kr/p/BcwmS
Smallbrainfield
https://flic.kr/p/8y3VLP
inkelv1122
https://flic.kr/p/6z2DEf
