00101010010101110010101011100101010:
A COSMIC BUM TRIP

The first thing to consider was the medium - even the best of all possible mixtapes can't save humanity if the aliens can't play it back. I assumed they wouldn't have CD players or turntables, but if they've mastered space travel, they must have at least mastered binary, and if they've mastered binary then they've most likely mastered some form of binary encoding that could at least be converted from an .mp3. So I chose to send them my mix as binary images of the files.

Included on the first page are simple pictorial instructions for decoding the images. A colored dot represents a 1; a white or black dot represents a 0. I chose small .mp3s - 128k - so the aliens won't have much to decode. Track one, for example, is four minutes and 38 seconds. 128 kbs * 276 seconds = 35,328,000 bytes of audio, or 282,624,000 bits. At 32 bits per pixel (a nice color-space) we get a 2972x2972 image.

I tried to make the mix as much of a bummer as I could, in the hopes that by the end of the mix they'll be too bummed out to blow us up or whatever. I have been listening to it a lot since putting it together, and it would be hard to get in a xenocidal mood.

1. Grouper - "Come Softly"
2. Brian Eno - "By This River"
3. Desire - "Colorless Sky"
4. Julee Cruise - "I Remember"
5. Gigi Masin - "Call Me"
6. Hatchback - "Orinoco Waltz"
7. Roger - "Emotions (OPN RMX)"

TRANSMISSIONS FROM HUMANITY

Recipient/Alien Overlord: Matt Neubert
Creator: Brady Harvey

Ok you guys, I am the WORST at getting anything done. I most likely would never be able to save the human race on my own due to tardiness and procrastination. Some of these were obv. I mean, what alien is gonna say no to an MJ dance party? C'MON!! Also I made you a tiny radio that will look like it's been to space and back once you get it in the mail. JAMMIN

Dearest Aliens,

Enclosed is an audial interpretation of the lovely range of experiences & emotions humans go through every day– loneliness, love, anger, jealously, happiness, revolt, sex, loss, our beliefs and so on. Some of these songs are simple, and delicate, while others are just pure rock n roll. There are millions of us on this planet, and even though we come from different backgrounds, we all have the same complex feelings..Please don’t kill us off, we’d love to stick around and show you what we’re made of.

Tracklist:
1. People of the Earth - GRAHAM COXON
2. Picture Book - THE KINKS
3. Billie Jean - MICHAEL JACKSON
4. This is Hardcore - PULP
5. Et Meme - FRANCOISE HARDY
6. Communication Breakdown - LED ZEPPELIN
7. True Love Will Find You In the End - DANIEL JOHNSTON
8. A New England - BILLY BRAGG
9. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - GIL-SCOTT HERON
10. Eliminator Jr. - SONIC YOUTH
11. Because - THE BEATLES
12. Johnny B Goode - CHUCK BERRY
13. Baby's Arms - KURT VILE
14. My Sweet Lord - GEORGE HARRISON
15. This Is the Day - THE THE
16. Don't Bring Me Down - ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA

Aliens Attack

 

With the theme of aliens, I knew I had to make a space ship of some sort...

 

 

 

So, here is the CD case/ship. The top is made from a wood bowl I found at Value Village. I sanded the foot down so that it wouldn't be as flat on top. I added the nubs, made the bottom half of the saucer out of a scrap of MDF, and welded up some legs. Then I painted it all silverish. The only problem is that it is top heavy when open, but it can always lean on a wall.

Inside is a three-eyed alien I made to fly the ship. The CD is under the wing nut.


As for the music, I went with the idea the idea of aliens arriving on a planet and the stages of their reception. The songs work themselves through the alien arrival, the leaders of the planet welcoming them with false promises, the fear of the general public, the fighting and threats of fighting, the doomsayers, the riots, and finally the coming together of everyone - the party!

1. Humans From Earth - T. Bone Burnett
2. Amerykan Promise - Eryka Badu
3. Y'all Scared - Outcast feat. T-Mo, Big Gipp, and Khujo
4. Something Wicked - 2Pac
5. Demolition Man - Grace Jones
6. Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J
7. Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' - Michael Jackson
8. Superstition - Stevie Wonder
9. Sign O' The Times - Prince
10. Fire - Ohio Players
11. Survival - The O'Jays
12. Save Me - James Knight and The Butlers
13. Synchronicity I - The Police
14. Rhythm Nation - Janet Jackson
15. There's A Party - NASA feat. George Clinton

The Joyous Cosmology

The Joyous Cosmology

129 Meters. Round 3. FDR Fuckin' Werewolf!!!!

Recipient: Brady Harvey

Creator: Anna Kronzer

Commentary:

When brainstorming this, I had a difficult time. By the time I sat down to actually make it, I had very little in mind as far as what the songs would be. I kept feeling like I should find the BEST, or most EPIC, or most BEAUTIFUL pieces of music in the world. But it's really hard to make those calls. So I just started looking through my music, and ignored those thoughts and then it came together pretty quickly. My choices were based on various things: I chose songs that seem exuberant or dramatic or hyperbolic in some ways, just to show the aliens what a strong capacity for depth of emotion we humans have. I chose songs with lyrics that described what the world would be like should they end it or kill us. I chose songs that describe the earth. I chose a few weird songs, thinking they might better relate to them. And I chose songs I love. 

The packaging consists of the book The Joyous Cosmology, with a CD sleeve at the end.

Brady, you are the cutest little alien and I have faith you'll make the right decision. 

Track listing: 

1. Love, Love, Love (Everyone) - Akron/Family

2. I Hear a New World - Joe Meek

3. The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore - The Walker Brothers

4. All The Sun That Shines - Peaking Lights

5. The Glorious Land - PJ Harvey

6. Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen - The Andrews Sisters

7. It's Obvious - Au Pairs

8. From The Rivers To The Ocean - Bill Callahan

9. Disaster - Besnard Lakes

10. Tick Tock - The Kelley Deal 6000

11. To The East - Electrelane

12. Plains of Nazca (edit) - Sun Dial

13. Farewell Transmission - Songs: Ohia

14. The Purple Bottle - Animal Collective

15. Spaceships - The Telescopes

16. Revolution #9 - The Beatles

Hey Aliens, We Like It Here! Bob to Jessi

This was pretty tough. I started by compiling every song I had that involved space, aliens, war, death, and being good (all of the songs). I put on Journey's Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) on first because it's hilarious and great and people need to relax about not liking Journey. After that I kind of based the rest off of that vibe. I tried to make a pretty diverse mix of songs that Jessi-Aliens would like enough to beam down from their space crafts and just party, man.

The packaging is inspired by the gold record shot into space by Carl Sagan and some scienteists. It is supposed to contain music and audio that would best represent the entire human race and its existence. Apparently it is still floating in space, waiting to be picked up by a hip alien race that still listens to vinyl. I spray painted a record I never listen to gold and then slipped the CD in the sleeve.

TRACK LIST:
1. Maggot Brain - Funkadelic
2. 30 Century Man - Scot Walker
3. Solitude Is Bliss - Tame Impala
4. To Be Happy Too - Curtiss A
5. Bow Down And Die - Almighty Defenders
6. Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
7. Cat People (Putting Out Fire) - David Bowie
8. Heaven or Hell - Salt-N-Pepa
9. Gold Dust Women - Fleetwood Mac
10. Cover Me - Bruce Springsteen
11. Comfortable Home (A True Story) - Ty Segall
12. London's Burning - The Clash
13. Beds Are Burning - Midnight Oil
14. Strange Magic - ELO
15. Hairdresser On Fire - Morrissey
16. Us V Them - LCS Soundsystem
17. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) - Journey

Recent Findings from the White Heart of Beta Solae VII

129M - Round 3 - FDR Fuckin' Werewolf!!!!!

Recipient: Rosa Castaneda
Creat0r: Jacob McMurray
Mix dropbox link: HERE

Blog commentary: This one was a hard one for me. I kind of ignored thinking about it for 2 weeks and then realized, "shit, I have to get on the ball and figure this out!!" The hardest part was coming up with a rational, at least to me, reason why to choose what tracks. I finally decided that if I was tasked with impressing a flotilla of inscrutable alien invaders enough to spare our planet, it'd be futile for me to try and show the utter diversity and wondrous infinity that is the world. I just couldn't do that, since only a tiny tiny slice has been experienced by me. I couldn't do the world justice, not in a million years. Then I realized that since I was a citizen of the Earth, I was also a representative sample, and if I focused on what music totally moved me personally, that might be the best tack, since I could certainly represent myself better than I could represent the whole of the Earth. And maybe in that way, I could impress the fuckers not to stomp on our planet.
   After that it was easier. I had an initial selection of 90+ songs, that I whittled down to 18 songs. On second thought, that part was really hard. And kind of depressing, since the resulting list that I came up with didn't feel very surprising to me - as in, I don't think anyone would really find these songs to be surprising picks from me. I kind of felt a little musically stagnant when I realized that. But then I figured that most of these songs made an impact on me at a certain point in my life where I gave a shit about the music probably a little bit more than I do now. Not that I don't care about it now, but I think I just don't have the bandwidth to have my mind blown to quite that capacity or intensity level anymore. So then I didn't feel so bad. (At least that's my rationalization to make myself feel better). Once I had the tracks, I was equally stumped on the packaging, finally deciding to play further with the sf-nal premise of the theme, and incorporate my usual favorites things: libraries/archaeology/books/design. So I made this ridiculous 48 page book (link to a pdf of interior spreads), repurposed a ton of design imagery that I had created over the past decade, and printed the thing via blurb.com.

   Rosa, I hope you enjoy this and spare the planet. You Must Decide!
   Oh, and the Kool Keith song at the beginning is 50% a joke, but it was a good, weird and funny song to kick it off.

Recent Findings from the White Heart of Beta Solae VII
by Sevniline Uyur

INTRODUCTION

During Fevren Year 1493.A26y, I received an interesting comm from a colleague, the Esteemed Weyshlan Apu-Punchau, stationed on the Culture Plate What Has Two Thumbs And…, currently orbiting the blue gas giant Beta Solae VII. Apu-Punchau and its researchers were dimension-mapping the white hole gnawing at the heart of the impressive stellar furnace and interleaved within their topographical shift data was significant noise that didn’t correlate with recent solar or singularity flux. The noise alone wasn’t necessarily odd – it is a white hole after all, with all the weird physics that accompany one. It was the structure, repetition, and interval that was curious. My colleague hyped me a copy of their dataset and using their typical readings, I was able to strip out the legitimate mining data, leaving the offending effluence. Keying off of repeating handles and gaps, and with a ​
battery of environmental and non-Euclidian filters, a intelligible comm of sorts revealed itself. Why it was subsumed within the mining data signal is the mystery. Consulting with Apu-Punchau, as well as checking outgoing and incoming comms/xmissions and the localized data ovoid surrounding
Beta Solae revealed no correlations – leaving only the perplexing conclusion: the comm was transmitted through the white hole itself!

Who was the transmission from? Where did it come from? Our universe, or another? As this has never occurred before, at least according to resources available in the Library (which are nigh-infinite), you can understand the excitement generated by the community at large. Over the last several monad, the comm has been thoroughly examined and is presented here in the following blads for your assessment, with little comment or speculation – insert on the Aether at any node and follow the myriad theories in depth.

Sevniline Uyur,
Senior Research Librarian
Third Encyclopedia of Tlön

PLEA

The original communication language, which is standard sub*Cal_4x-based, but as with other examples of that mongrel language, gives no real clues as to the provenance of the source civ. For ease of use, it has been translated into modern Marain and tesselated into fractal variants for localisation.

Oh Sister,

I, merely one among billions of our only Urth, have been chosen by the ruling Gang of Four to represent our planet and species during this imminent travail. Your motivations are unknown to us, your visage monolithic and resolute, and our rejoinders toward your Decree so far impotent. As a last and desperate attempt at parley, I can only call upon as salvation the import of what we do share: sentience. So precious and rare amongst the black seas of infinity, so easily extinguished. Let us be siblings, traversing the fustian void together, not apart!
    I could attempt to present Urth’s fecund diversity and endless wonders, but as I am me, I can give you only that with which I am most intimate: my passions, my emotions, my innermost thoughts, my yearning toward the Increate. Against hope, mayhaps this humble offering will resonate and sway your inexorable encroachment. Accept this vessel with solace and friendship, Sister.

A Citizen

 TRACKLISTING

1. “Intro” - Kool Keith - Black Elvis/Lost in Space, 1999 = savant insanity
2. “Thalassocracy” - Frank Black - Teenager of the Year, 1994 = highbrow squawk
3. “Satan” - Deerhoof - Holdypaws, 1999 = naive trickster
4. “Cristo Redentor” - Donald Byrd - A New Perspective, 1963 = sublime reverence
5. “Only Shallow” - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless, 1991 = impressionistic bliss
6. “Black Eyed Dog” - Nick Drake - Time of No Reply, 1986 = haunting despair
7. “Banned in D.C.” - Bad Brains - Bad Brains, 1982 = jackhammer nihilism
8. “Expressway to Yr. Skull” - Sonic Youth - EVOL, 1986 = paradigm shift
9. “Gently Johnny” - Magnet - The Wicker Man soundtrack, 1973 = wistful fecundity
10. “Auditorium” - Guided by Voices - Alien Lanes, 1995 = neolithic dadaism
11. “The True Wheel” - Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), 1974 = pre-verbal jubilance
12. “Baby” - Os Mutantes - Jardim Elétrico, 1971 = sunburnt love
13. “Shangri-La” - The Kinks - Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), 1969 = ritual acceptance
14. “Dance of the Inhabitants of the Invisible City of Bladensburg” - John Fahey - The Yellow Princess, 1968 = autumn reverence
15. “Beat Bop” - Rammellzee and K-Rob - Beat Bop 12", 1983 = street surrealism
16. “From the Nursery” - Wire - Chairs Missing, 1978 = potential energy
17. “So Shy” - Sam Prekop - Sam Prekop, 1999 = lush security
18. “Will the Night” - Low - Secret Name, 1999 = final goodbyes

EPILOGUE

So what really happened with this, the Tompule-Wallabi of our times? The goal of this publication is to merely present, but how can you not speculate, even a little? The planet Urth is absent from any current charts, perhaps arguing that the Citizen’s Plea failed. Or maybe it was heard and made an impact on the equally opaque aggressors, who re-evaluated their trajectory and spared the Urthan sphere from (assumed) annihilation. And since we are now fully in the demesne of conjecture, possibly that decision caused a paradigm shift, a civ-wide species reflection resulting in the eventual societal sublimation into some upper-dimensional afterlife? Equally possible given the utter dearth of data, beyond the comm itself. Who knows. The unfortunate aspect of forays into civ-level archaeology of obscure sub-galactic localities is that answers are often not forthcoming. The universe is too vast, the civs come and gone innumerable, and unfortunately, academic research budgets far too limited.

MIX IMAGES

(Check out the whole layout here)

Theme: Color Bomb
Recipient: Brady Harvey