This CD-ROM bears works of literature and art about Mars and shows how important the imagination of writers and artists has been in inspiring the real exploration of space. The disk also carries the logo of The Planetary Society and the names of its members, a fitting symbol of the power of individuals to support our development as a spacefaring species. The Voyager and Mars messages were positive and optimistic tokens of our world as we might describe it to others. It is a warning marker for a nuclear waste site in New Mexico, intended to warn our descendants for the next 10,000 years against inadvertent intrusion into the waste repository. For an artist it is, of course, thrilling to be involved in such projects.
Art is one of the best ways by which societies leave a record of themselves.
All artists want their work to survive and be seen by an audience. Few artists have had the opportunities I have had of creating something specifically for audiences in deep space, on a colonized Mars, or on Earth in the year 12,000. The fact that I will never live to see how the works are eventually received hardly matters. Since 1988, I have lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, which sits like a lens in the middle of the Pacific, focusing varied aspects of nature to the observant eye. Here intrepid Polynesian explorers arrived after long journeys from Samoa and Tahiti, navigating by subtle signs in ocean and sky, guided by the stars, in voyages that prefigure our future journeys to distant planets.