10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17189
application/pdf
2038-3460
17189
2
en
Paul Fryer
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Telstar (Wisdom) 200 (Cover’s Comment)
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
5
Editorial
2015-01-29
2023-06-13
2015-01-29
2023-07-27
TS
Paul Fryer
2014
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17189
2038-3460
2
en
Telstar (Wisdom) 200 (Cover’s Comment)
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17189/16086
5
                                                           Cover’s comment

Telstar (Wisdom) 200 (Dark bog oak, various sustainable exotic wood veneers) © by
Paul Fryer 2008


The Telstar 1 satellite was planet Earth’s first orbital communications platform.
This artwork is an exact copy of that satellite, the body of which is rendered in
partially fossilised wood which is thousands of years old.
When Telstar 1 was launched in 1962 it captured the worlds imagination. TV
signals were sent live from America to Europe using the satellite as an orbital
repeater station in space. It heralded the beginning of the information age as we
know it.
The work Telstar (Wisdom) is an interpretation of this device as an object more
akin to an ancient reliquary or fount. It highlights the very short distance in time
between this moment in human technical achievement and the earliest technical
drawings of Da Vinci a mere four generations previous. We have come a long way
in a short time, and this was only the beginning of the meteoric acceleration we
are now experiencing as humankind. Telstar was the product of human hands.
Perhaps soon the idea of human handiwork will be altogether redundant as time
and technology telescope humanity into the pages of history.

                                                                       Paul Fryer

Photograph by Tessa Angus; reproduction by permission of the artist.
