Planet Earth in Outer Space, part 1
by Bill Schaeffer
copyright (c) 2011
William A. Schaeffer
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All photographs are NASA Hubble telescope photos, from the NASA website that are in the public domain. All "outer space sounds" are from websites that have put these sounds in the public domain and the websites are listed below. The television audio clips are all less than eight seconds and as such constitue "fair use" under current copyright law. Just ask TMZ -- they use clips "from everything" ALL THE TIME and ALL their clips are less than eight seconds long. Fair use, and public domain. That's all there is to this video.
Video Editor Bill Schaeffer collected sound samples about five years ago and some additional samples more recently. For this piece, he mixed two audio files groups in a randomly ordered alternating sequence. The "sound bites" consist of audio clips of Group 1 - 1) quotes by famous celebrities, and Group 2 - 2) "sounds" from space, 3) satellite data telemetry and 4) communications used by the space program.
Bill did not create any electronic sounds or music. He did not filter the sounds in any way. All non speaking audio clips are believed to be "authentic" sounds from space.
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Research for this project was based primarily on a DVD lecture series about Hubble Telescope photos by Professor David M. Meyer. The DVD series was produced by www.thegreatcourses.com and is highly informative. Professor Meyer presents a fascinating series of lectures on the Hubble Telescope pictures.
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For the slide show, photos from the Hubble Telescope website were selected and downloaded. They are "self ordered" in the slide show by the original file name. The photo presentation ordering was not changed in any other way.
Using one of his sound constructions as an audio track, Bill was amazed that the two data streams (video and audio) ended up being almost exactly the same length.
A very fortunate DADA art accident and it is hoped that you enjoy it.
A great deal of this project was selected and ordered by natural randomized pruning methods. When sound clips were selected, it was with no final use in mind. It was never intended these two sound clip files were to be combined, but the result IS kind of intriguing.
As Bill says, "The older I get, the more I am attracted to the DADA aesthetic of randomness, ordinariness, and nonsense. I am reminded of the concept that All Things are equally meaningless."
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Aside: It is interesting to note that the expression "All things are equally meaningless," is a tautology, or logical equivalent, to the expression, "All things are equally meangingful." Curiously however, one does not experience the two statements as saying exactly the same thing.
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There are 200 - 400 billion stars, or suns, in the Milky Way galaxy alone, according to wikipedia. The known Universe contains about 200 billion galaxies.
If every galaxy in the known Universe has 200 billion stars and every star has only one planet, (and our Sun has at least 8 or possibly 10 planets), then there are at least 40,000 billion billion, or 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the known Universe.
Do you think it is possible that there is at least one other planet in this known Universe that has also given birth to, or evolved, recognizably intelligent life, and "human like" bipedial, hominid species?
It seems not only likely, but certain. But that is just one opinion.
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"I wonder what the color of the night time sky is on that other distant planet, and how they measure the passing of time till morning comes, and how many moons they have reflected in what kind of seas; and how many toes they have on what kind of feet; and finally if they can even see it, what is the color of our own faint sun in their own far distant sky?" - Wm S
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Audio recordings from space by Stephen P. McGreevy at www.auroralchorus.com
good job Stephen!
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soundtrack now available at www.cdbaby.com/all/was57
