the hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard

May 30, 2015 6:39 AM

The Great Silence is a collaboration between artists Allora & Calzadilla and writer Ted Chiang. Transcript
posted by fearfulsymmetry (4 comments total)

Unexpectedly touching, thank you.
posted by Monochrome at 8:18 AM on May 30, 2015

Sad, frustrating, and lovely. Thank you for posting this.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:28 AM on May 30, 2015

Thank you thank you.
posted by allthinky at 5:59 AM on May 31, 2015

This bit in the Artnews link: the world’s largest radio telescope, located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, and the endangered wild parrots living in the surrounding forest - that's just lazy writing to conflate Arecibo with Esperanza so that the endangered parrots can live around the telescope. As far as I know, they do not.

But the transcript, with (I assume) Ted Chiang's subtitles, is really lovely. I wish I could see the film.

> When Arecibo is not listening to anything else, it hears the voice of creation.
> Humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe.

These images are so evocative that I have to give them a pass on their not-quite-100% accuracy. They're pretty close, I guess.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:49 PM on June 1, 2015 [1 favorite]