Inertia: Speculative Fossils

Inertia is a speculative work that crosses the disappearance of the Earth in the eye of the Voyager probes with the atmospheric and ecological situation in the east of Montreal.

1977. The two Voyager probes are launched into space to study the planets in our Solar System. Symbolically, each one carries a gold-plated copper disk bearing a message intended to represent humanity. It contains images, music and drawings meant for a hypothetical intelligent extra-terrestrial life form.

Inertia revisits this approach on Earth using artifacts created to reflect today’s environmental challenges — they’re made of biomaterials, that is, renewable organic plant or animal matter. The work centres around a bioplastic disk that displays a binary representation of a daytime air quality status near petrochemical plants east of Montreal. This becomes the score for the first piece of music in a sequence of four composed using these data as well as the calculated distance of the Voyager probes from our planet. A series of laser-engraved biomaterial membranes and a film bear witness to this process, which suggests that in the same way that Earth is disappearing from the eye of the Voyager probes, the living conditions of the planet’s inhabitants are becoming increasingly precarious.