The Golden Archive, Amy Karle, 2023-2024

Amy Karle

The Golden Archive is a cosmic time capsule preserving Earth's biological and cultural legacy for up to a billion years. Expanding upon NASA's 1977 Golden Record, Amy Karle created this contemporary archive’s art and design, integrating updated pulsar map, anatomical humans, DNA, seeds, cultural repositories, and an AI LLM, encoded onto ultra-durable billion-year media. One edition is embedded on the Moon; another is set to launch into deep space in 2026–2027. Created for future humans or non-human intelligences, the Archive explores what we aspire to communicate across vast spans of time, space, and species. What is the best of humanity worth sharing? What truths define our identity and culture across civilizations? It uses multi-modal formats - visual, biological, digital - to construct an adaptive message. 3D data visualization of an updated pulsar map as cosmic address and timestamp, accompanied by anatomical imagery representing the human form set over the Earth manifest on the covers. Human knowledge and cultural achievements are stored via ceramic ribbon nanolayer technology, designed to last for a billion years. DNA and seeds are preserved in synthetic amber, offering the potential to seed life elsewhere. The inclusion of an AI large language model offers scaffolding to potentially decode and understand the Archive's contents, whether encountered by future humans or extraterrestrial beings. The Golden Archive reflects aspirations of Earth's life and cultures in a time capsule that may outlast Earth- a planetary self-portrait reflecting our collective achievements, aspirations, and values we aspire to share with futures unknown.