Pioneer Plaque

In the previous entry, I mentioned about one particular president who sent something into space in hopes that alien lifeforms would receive it. Okay, so after an arduous search on the internet, I finally found what I was referring to.



The Pioneer Plaque are a pair of gold anodized aluminum plaques which were placed on two spacecrafts, the Pioneer 10 and the Pioneer 11 in 1972. The unique thing about these plaques were that it contained pictures of mankind (nude figures of a man and woman) and other symbols that provided information about the spacecraft and where it came from.



Another item that was sent into space on board the Voyager spacecraft in 1977 was the Voyager Golden Record that contained sound and images that showed human life and the cultures on Earth. It is a time capsule made for intelligent lifeforms to decipher, seen as a form of communication between Earthlings and extraterrestrials.

As said by U.S. President Jimmy Carter,

"This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours."

The interesting thing about this time capsule would the contents contained within it; 115 images and a variety of sounds including surf, wind, thunder, animal calls, even printed messages from Jimmy Carter. Images are coded in analog form, and spoken greetings in 55 languages are included in the record. This record is made of gold-plated copper and also contains a sample of uranium on the cover, considering that uranium has a half-life of 4.51 billion years, it is hoped that any lifeforms encountered in the far future would use it to find out the age of this record.

For more information, type any of the highlighted text into Wikipedia... As I got my information from that website.

Here are some of the 115 images that can be found in the record.

Since the beginning of time

In week 3's class, we were asked to think about how we would communicate with a person living in a thousand years from now.

In regards to the topic that we have chosen (mine being 'age'), how are we to pass down information through time, making sure that it would survive the natural erosion due to elements in the environment, or how can it be as unaltered as possible if it were to be passed down by person to person along the generations.

As I was thinking about it, I remembered the time when there was an experiment done in America where some president (I forgot which one) decided to code messages and send it out into space, hoping that an alien would pick it up and decipher the codes. Traversing through space and time requires solid materials that would last through heat and friction, and that could possibly be one of things that I would consider if I were to pass down my interpretation of 'age' a thousand years down the road.

Rites of Passage

Currently, I have been racking my brains for my upcoming assignment. How can I manifest AGE, while focusing on rites of passages as my main idea for passing age?

I thought of the significance of that, and I came down to important points in time. For each rite of passage that a person passes through, time stops for the moment to celebrate that event. Celebrations, cheers, joy, solemnity, meditation... are different reactions or emotions that are experienced at the event. But they're significant nonetheless, to the person who is going through the rite of passage and to the people around them.

Thinking how I could signify AGE, I thought of the trickling of time... Perhaps using similar ideas to the hourglass, or burning candles with trickling wax to indicate it. But I felt that it was too linear, too straightforward... In these ideas, time just flows and never stops, for that important event in life. As I racked my brains again, somehow I became stuck to the idea of the flame and fire. As it is in my rituals and celebrates, people light candles, and as the flicker of light comes alive the entire atmosphere changes, marking the importance of that very day, that very hour.

So I finally came up with an idea. Matchsticks!

Well, matchsticks are short, and I thought of linking each matchstick to the next so that I could set them ablaze. The wonderful thing about matchsticks would be the way it ignites. Each time friction or some form of catalyst hits the head, it suddenly just burns up, like a mini explosion. And these mini explosions could work in my project as I paralleled them to the important celebrations in life - rites of passages. And as each matchstick shrivels, there goes the passing of time too.

Here's an idea of what I intend to do. But I have yet to set them alight, considering how my home isn't fireproof. I wonder how I could actually show this in class since we've fire detectors and such... But anyway, here are the pictures!






Hoping to light it up!

Our M&M analogy of Archives

Last week in class we had to work in a group of 4 or 5 and to define what an archive is. My group used a pictorial analogy to represent an archive in the simplest manner - a jar of M&Ms.

The jar of M&Ms represents an archive. The M&Ms inside represent information that is stored in an archive. An archive houses information, and unless someone needs the information, the jar will be closed and the information (or M&Ms in this case) just sits idly. But when the jar is opened, and when the M&Ms are taken out, the information is further sorted into groups.



M&Ms can be grouped into:

Colors
Green, red, yellow, blue, brown, silver...

Type
Peanuts, Reese's peanut butter, almonds, plain, crispy

Chocolate
Milk, dark chocolate, white chocolate

And that is the simplest representation of an archive. Also with the knowledge that we have, we now know that M&M doesn't produce fruit flavored chocolates, or perhaps even duo-flavored M&Ms! This could be a way to introduce new items or promotions for M&Ms, and it speaks a lot about how a designer should function as well with the help of an archive.

There are many different types of archives, but here are some:

1. Library: Sorts books and other media according to subject and call number
2. Music shop: Sorts music by genre and language
3. Personal computers: I sort my information by subject matter/type
4. Museums: Sorts information by timeline, geography, subject matter...
5. School lockers: Individual lockers for students, students in turn sort their own things inside
6. Digital database: Information sorted by subject, time, file type, location...

However wonderful an archive is it also depends on the shelf-life of the type of medium that it uses. Libraries have existed for a long time, along with their books. However books such as incunabulum are specially kept in conditions that will extend their durability as they were made since the 14th century. Other archives such as digital ones are prone to getting hacked or malfunctioning because of viruses and other problems. Sometimes without the internet, one is unable to access to a database that is put up on an online server. Digital information archived into rewritable discs or drives may become useless eventually due to the constant changing and evolutionary technologies. Even in physical forms, certain inks on paper won't usually last for a long time as the material deteriorates.

Although there are drawbacks to the way we archive, archiving is still necessary to us, as we live in a society that has the backbone of order and organization. Without archiving, we would fall apart as information gets jumbled up, lost or destroyed. Without an archive, there would be no reason for education, knowledge and a functioning society.

The study of aging!

Gerontology!

Of course, anything that's put into human context has a scientific study for it. To be more exact, gerontology studies the social, biological, and psychological aspects of aging.

There is more to it though, the scientific study of the aging process is known as biogerontology (which I most probably am NOT touching on), the aging population (NOT touching on it too), normal aging and age-related diseases (NO NO NO... not touching on it). Okay, so it seems like I should steer clear away from researching on gerontology since it seems to be the 'age' that I'm not touching on.

I'm more interested in the cultural notions of age. Such as the celebratory stages in life. For instance in many western cultures, or cultures that have been influenced by the west celebrate their 21st birthdays, since it represents the coming of age as an adult. The less celebrated, but just as popular sweet 16, has been made into a MTV reality program that documents spoilt rich kids in 'My Super Sweet 16' on their birthdays. In the Japanese tradition, the 'Seven-Five-Three' (shichi-go-san) festival celebrates the age of boys who are three and five years-old, and girls who are seven years-old by visiting the Shinto shrine for blessings of health and happiness.

Also, traditionally the Chinese count their ages differently. Instead of being born on the 7th of December 1985 (Age 23), technically I'd be 24 now, with my upcoming birthday being celebrated on the 12th of December instead. Try this website for your lunar age!
http://www.asia-home.com/china/cncaps.php

With the counting of age, comes the rites of passage which marks an important event that changes a person's social status. Rites of passage is a global phenomenon, each culture with their different rituals and ways of celebrating. For the Jews, boys who reach the age of 13, and girls who reach the age of 12 become responsible for themselves, also coinciding with them transiting from children to teenagers.

For now, I think I'll be researching on the different rites of passage in all around the world, as important markings of time seem to be the direction that I'd love to head to. After all, life is short, and remembering how the way you were shows how much you've grown.

The definition

There are numerous definitions for the word 'age'.
Age can be a noun, as well as a verb.

In www.dictionary.com, there are as many as twenty definitions for 'age'. But some of the closest that I could find which represents my topic of 'age' would be:

1. (noun) a period of human life, measured by years from birth, usually marked by a certain stage or degree of mental or physical development and involving legal responsibility and capacity: the age of discretion; the age of consent; The state raised the drinking age from 18 to 21 years.

2. (noun) Psychology. the level of mental, emotional, or educational development of a person, esp. a child, as determined by various tests and based on a comparison of the individual's score with the average score for persons of the same chronological age.

I chose to research on this word as it relates back to my FYP. Unlike my other classmates who are working towards their goal of searching ideas for their FYP, I'm in the process of doing mine, 60% of which is in completion. My FYP topic speaks of self-identity, and part of my book uses age to represent who I am. Despite the many definitions of age, I am focusing on the aspect of age as an important event in our lives, how we see it affecting us culturally, personally and biologically (scientifically).

Another blog for class

This journal will represent my thoughts, research, reflection, or anything that's random... And for now, my first assignment for Graphic Design IV includes finding chunks of information about 'age'.

This assignment 'Archive Fever' is about gathering related information to a word that I have picked, and finding out the most interesting facts and later creating a systematic form of presentation for the information that I have found.