‘A Response’
Art installation / Viral campaign
Client: Cardiff Contemporary Arts Festival.
Huge ‘Meteor’ Plummets To Earth Over Pier In South Wales Leaving A Trail Of Fire In It’s Wake.
Cameraman was videoing structure before he looked up and caught the shimmering UFO begin to descend at great speed before appearing to crash into the sea.
A flaming meteor-like object can be seen crashing to the ground leaving a trail of fire in this amazing footage. As the video begins, dusk is settling over a pier on the South Wales coast. Sud-denly the cameraman spots something bright in the sky at cloud level. The shimmering object begins to descends at great speed. As it rockets through the early evening sky it leaves a trail of fire and smoke in its wake. It then crashes in the distance, possibly into the sea.
He said: “It was about 6.40pm and I was on top of the hill leading up to Penarth town. “I thought it was a flare from the RNLI.” It is still unclear what exactly the flying object was.
Daily Mirror, 19 Oct 2016
Revealed: The Story Behind The ‘Meteor’ Seen In The Sky Over Penarth.
When footage emerged on Wednesday evening appearing to show a dramatic fireball in the skies over Penarth, theories ranged from a meteor to a hoax. The end of October is marked by the Orionid meteor shower - but others thought there might be more to it.
It has now been revealed that the ‘meteor’ was in fact part of artist Mark James’ work for the Cardiff Contemporary Visual Art festival. Mark took inspiration from the 1977 Voyager golden record - a ‘time capsule’ intended to show extraterrestrials what life on Earth was like.
The disc contained images and sound recordings and was attached to the two Voyager spacecraft in the hope of making contact with other intelligent life forms. In 1977, the human race sought to communicate with life in space using a gold disc, intending for life forms galaxies away to play it and to get to know us through our music and other cultural references. The dramatic fireball seen across Cardiff Bay on Wednesday evening, which looked like a meteor, was the disc ‘being returned to us’ by those who had found the original ‘Voyager’ record. It is part of ‘A Response’ - my work for Cardiff Contemporary visual arts biennial. – Mark James
ITV NEWS Report, 20 Oct 2016
Artist Statement:
“In 1977 the human race sought to communicate with life in space using a gold disc, intending for life forms galaxies away to play it and to get to know us through our music and other cultural references. The majority of those messages were quite self-satisfied, suggesting how advanced we’d become as Western civilisations. The dramatic fireball seen across Cardiff Bay on Wednesday evening, which looked like a meteor, was the disc being returned to us by those who had found the original ‘Voyager’ record.
It is part of ‘A Response’, my work for Cardiff Contemporary visual arts biennial. It’s a response from whatever life lives out beyond the stars, who might be watching us and the state our world is in, to say ‘what have you done?’ as we continue to foster wars and pollute the planet at will. By displaying the new gold disc with new and updated messages, producing videos of fire in the sky that get media attention and creating a soundtrack with the help of Cian and Bunf from Super Furry Animals, I hope it might offer a moment of reflection for people.”
