NOTE:

Dear visitor (if there is any) please note the following: The blog "Broken Radius" is hosted at Google Blogger's server. I can therefore not guarantee that your visit to the blog or any comment you write wont be recorded by the NSA. If you have any worries about this, you can visit instead my alternative blog Letters-to-a-Persian-Cat. This one is hosted at a European server which hopefully acknowledges visitors privacy.

28.8.17

Crazy Project of the third kind

I had developed at least two more or less enthusiastic projects during the last 5 years or so, which had little to do with my job or my skills. But if one reads good autobiographies of gifted people, one is occasionally surprised what sudden new talents they discover and follow with great energy.

So it happened to me 6 years ago, when I had to work together with a PhD student from Iran, met her more often than nessesarry for the project, and after she left I suffered of bad heartache. So I tried to compensate this loss with developing more interest in the politics of current Iran, issues of human rights and the question why people from there leave the country to look for freedom abroad. I came across some morvellous books, like those from Amir H. Cheheltan, unfortunately still completely unknown in the West, who with describes the psychology of victims and traitors in the political system of Iran. Another one were Shahrnush Parsipur’s memories about her time in Evin prison (kissing the Sword). I developed the idea to collect letters from Iranian political prisoners, which they send to their friends or family, translate these letters into as many as possible foreign languages (in a sort of community afford) and publish them on a website. I came quite far with this project, and even had some response from foreign friends, colleagues or just internet buddies who contributed the translations. But my idea that the project could get viral did not worked out. Although I tried to promote it by inviting some famous political artists, social scientists and political activists in Germany, Europe, the US, there was not so much response. The website, however, is still active and its called Evin Rosetta.

The next funny project, with some political and some cultural and entertaining context was my plan to develop a Vineyard here in Munich, using one of the artificially made rubbish hills. It should have been a Vineyard of the Nations, because I invited people from quite different countries (Russia, US, Iran, Germany, Afghanistan, Israel) to participate. The flyer from our first meeting you can find here.

But again it appeared much harder to motivate the people to stay on board. Some simply said they had no time, others honestly expressed their doubts or their fear to do something with foreigners.

Maybe I should post an new announcement via Twitter. Although it is only for daily news, the range of readers and potential responders could be much larger.

What it takes to succesfully launch a really crazy project can be red here:

Voyagers Golden Record.

About the design of the golden data record with information about our earth, mankind and a couple of sounds and voices and music from different sources. The Golden Record was launched on board the Voyager probe to travel across the universe, and maybe being found and played by an extraterrestrial civilisation.

No comments:

Post a Comment