"The process of making a tablet is relatively simple: In his shop, Martin can run a digital file through a laser engraver that engraves directly onto a ceramic tablet, which is about eight inches by eight inches, with special ceramic stains. For blocks of text—as in the case of copying books—he's invented something he calls ceramic microfilm, on which super-downsized text can be crowded to include up to five 400-page books per tablet, the result of which looks like its own piece of art, crammed letters blurring into dense lines of peaks and valleys. He'll spend swaths of time making the tablets, and when he feels he has enough of them, say, 10 or 20 because they can get heavy, he loads them into ceramic crates and makes a trip to the salt mine to add to the time capsule.
Ideally, according to Martin, the tablets in MOM reflect three independent information streams, or types of content. The first he considers editorial, which is meant to include the automatic collection of editorials from newspapers around the world, from all sorts of political and geographical points of view. Martin has already struck up agreements with several media companies to allow articles to flow into the archive in hopes of creating daily snapshots of the issues that obsess our world.
The second stream, according to Martin, is institutional materials—and this is where he hopes to add resolution to the snapshot of this moment, elevating scientific papers and dissertations, art projects and popular songs, among other material, culled from universities and corporations, awards committees and other institutions. He might include the Harry Potter series, but among documents like the Magna Carta is something particularly vital to Martin as well: information provided by various nuclear-waste agencies about the location of nuclear-waste storage as a warning to future finders. “The nuclear industry needs to forward information about waste repositories into the future in persistent, accessible, and comprehensible ways,” reads one testimony on the MOM website, from Swedish nuclear expert Sofie Tunbrant. “MOM offers a possibility to complement archives, markers, and human memory.”
The third and last stream is what he classifies as personal. These are individuals' stories, passions, or tributes—anything, really—contributed by anyone. You can go now to the MOM website and type your deepest thoughts, which will be translated to a tablet for future finders to read. He also allows people to design their own ceramic tablets, with text and images, sometimes sharing a graphic-design program, though this comes at a cost. In order to encourage offerings from a variety of continents, Martin puts a sliding scale on these personal tablets, depending on the GDP of your country. If you're from Malawi, it will cost just over two euros; if from Switzerland, just over 600 euros. Worried about a profusion of tablets that marked weddings, Martin approached Claudia Theune, who said a bunch of wedding photos from around the world would be a boon to future finders, showing them how much we valued the ceremony and how various our celebrations were. (When I asked her about it, she said, “We have three perspectives that show us a very, very colorful world of ourselves. By the words, by the pictures, and by the things. They can be complementary, additional, or contradictory.”)"
#archerships
#archershipsart
#archershipsMOM
https://www.gq.com/story/memory-of-mankind-time-capsule
Ideally, according to Martin, the tablets in MOM reflect three independent information streams, or types of content. The first he considers editorial, which is meant to include the automatic collection of editorials from newspapers around the world, from all sorts of political and geographical points of view. Martin has already struck up agreements with several media companies to allow articles to flow into the archive in hopes of creating daily snapshots of the issues that obsess our world.
The second stream, according to Martin, is institutional materials—and this is where he hopes to add resolution to the snapshot of this moment, elevating scientific papers and dissertations, art projects and popular songs, among other material, culled from universities and corporations, awards committees and other institutions. He might include the Harry Potter series, but among documents like the Magna Carta is something particularly vital to Martin as well: information provided by various nuclear-waste agencies about the location of nuclear-waste storage as a warning to future finders. “The nuclear industry needs to forward information about waste repositories into the future in persistent, accessible, and comprehensible ways,” reads one testimony on the MOM website, from Swedish nuclear expert Sofie Tunbrant. “MOM offers a possibility to complement archives, markers, and human memory.”
The third and last stream is what he classifies as personal. These are individuals' stories, passions, or tributes—anything, really—contributed by anyone. You can go now to the MOM website and type your deepest thoughts, which will be translated to a tablet for future finders to read. He also allows people to design their own ceramic tablets, with text and images, sometimes sharing a graphic-design program, though this comes at a cost. In order to encourage offerings from a variety of continents, Martin puts a sliding scale on these personal tablets, depending on the GDP of your country. If you're from Malawi, it will cost just over two euros; if from Switzerland, just over 600 euros. Worried about a profusion of tablets that marked weddings, Martin approached Claudia Theune, who said a bunch of wedding photos from around the world would be a boon to future finders, showing them how much we valued the ceremony and how various our celebrations were. (When I asked her about it, she said, “We have three perspectives that show us a very, very colorful world of ourselves. By the words, by the pictures, and by the things. They can be complementary, additional, or contradictory.”)"
#archerships
#archershipsart
#archershipsMOM
https://www.gq.com/story/memory-of-mankind-time-capsule