The Tapestry of the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence
July 12, 2018 1:20 PM   Subscribe

The Tapestry of the Search for Terrestrial Intelligence : MetaFilter's own moonmilk took a copy of a copy of the audio data on Voyager's Golden Record, and turned it into a 40-meter-long tapestry of human images-as-sound. Watch it all scroll by. [via mefi projects]
posted by cortex (16 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow! That's incredibly cool. I really wish I could see it person.
posted by treepour at 1:26 PM on July 12, 2018


Wow. So cool!
posted by terrapin at 1:50 PM on July 12, 2018


Watching the tapestry scroll by makes me feel a lot of emotions, most of them good*, and all of them powerful. I couldn't this was cooler.

* - I'm never going to feel completely okay when I'm reminded of my insignificant size compared to the rest of the universe.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:58 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


Makes my own attempt at SETI-themed textile art look kind of like shit.
posted by theodolite at 2:07 PM on July 12, 2018 [5 favorites]


Welcome mat!
posted by chavenet at 2:13 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


Wait, how did they create the tapestry?
posted by widdershins at 2:18 PM on July 12, 2018


Aw, that's rad, theodolite.
posted by cortex at 2:20 PM on July 12, 2018


Mod note: Editor's note: the yahoo who made this post originally suggested the tapestry was forty feet long. It is forty meters long, which is significantly longer. The yahoo has been sacked. We regret the error.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:08 PM on July 12, 2018 [10 favorites]


Thanks for posting this! Here's some pictures of my dog sitting on a test swatch.
posted by moonmilk at 4:08 PM on July 12, 2018 [4 favorites]


I love your Arecibo transmission rug, theodolite!

I bet there's someone here who's embroidered the Pioneer Plaque.
posted by moonmilk at 4:11 PM on July 12, 2018 [2 favorites]


By now, confusing meters and feet in the context of spacecraft has become a fine Earthling tradition, anyway my guess watching the video was 500 feet.
posted by joeyh at 5:11 PM on July 12, 2018 [1 favorite]


I originally wanted to make it 150 meters long - nearly 500 feet - but budget (and common sense) didn't allow.
posted by moonmilk at 7:24 PM on July 12, 2018 [3 favorites]


That is officially the coolest thing I've ever seen.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:32 PM on July 12, 2018


The video of the tapestry scrolling with the audio of the golden record is wonderful!

My attempts at decoding the Voyager images used the archive.org version, which unfortunately was recorded with auto-gain control and a wobbly record player. The sync pulse allows us to handle the variable speed (Kyle McDonald, who actually knows how to do signal processing, used FFTs to detect them), but the AGC's normalization really makes it washed out and adds the dark, shadow-like bands after the pulses and data.
posted by autopilot at 12:39 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


This should take its place alongside the Bayeux tapestry and Carole King’s Tapestry among the most celebrated tapestries ever! Theodolite’s rug is very cool as well!
posted by TedW at 4:59 AM on July 13, 2018


Mynd you, yahøø tapestries kan be pretti nasti.
posted by biogeo at 10:15 AM on July 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


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