“There’s a horrific nature to this idea – the notion of an end, but at the same time, there’s the positivity of everyone being on record. So, much like a black box on any plane, you’re glad it’s there when you’re flying,” Michael Ritchie, managing director of Revolver, the company managing the project, recently told ABC News.
The Glue Society’s Jonathon Kneebone, artistic director of the project, said the purpose of Earth’s Black Box was not to say, ‘well, we’re doomed’. “It’s actually to say, ‘whatever we do from now on, we’re going on record anyway’. So maybe there’s an opportunity to take action which prevents that catastrophe.”
The black box will be connected to the internet and the information will be gathered and sent to enormous hard drives that can hold several decades worth of data, and its capabilities will be extended as storage methods evolve.
The box itself is designed to last 10,000 years and to survive earthquakes and cyclones, and solar panels on the roof will provide power, with batteries available as a backup.
Construction is expected to be completed soon, and Earth’s Black Box will be strategically located in a remote, geologically and geopolitically stable location on the west coast of the Australian island state of Tasmania.
The project is a non-commercial collaboration between a multidisciplinary team, including marketing and communications agency Clemenger BBDO, researchers from the University of Tasmania, an artistic collective called the Glue Society, and Sydney production company Revolver.